All these people who say success changes people well, no, it just magnifies what’s there.

Smith’s remark pushes back against the cliché that fame or money fundamentally “changes” a person. Instead, he argues that success functions like a spotlight or amplifier: it increases a person’s capacity to act on preexisting traits—generosity, insecurity, ego, kindness, cruelty—because it brings more resources, attention, and freedom from ordinary constraints. The line also implies a moral warning: if someone becomes unbearable after “making it,” the seeds were already present, and success merely removed limits and consequences. Read this way, the quote reframes celebrity behavior as character revealed under pressure and opportunity rather than character newly created by them.