Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld is recalling a rip-roaring day on set with Will Smith.
According to Sonnenfeld, production had to be paused on the hit 1997 sci-fi comedy for three hours after Smith, 56, let out a powerful fart.
Sonnenfeld shared the anecdote on the Wednesday, October 2, episode of the “Let’s Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa” podcast, detailing how Smith and costar Tommy Lee Jones were positioned upside down inside a “hermetically sealed” chamber that doubled as the interior of their characters’ car.
“I say, ‘Roll camera.’ And I hear Will Smith go, ‘Oh Jesus, so sorry. Tommy, so sorry. Baz, get the ladder.’ And you hear Tommy going, ‘That’s fine, Will. No worries, Will. Don’t worry, Will.’ I don’t know what’s gone on,” Sonnenfeld remembered.
The director continued, “We bring the ladder over, Tommy reaches his leg out as the ladder is coming over [and] races down the stairs. What happened was [that] Will Smith is a farter. It’s just some people are. And you really don’t want to be inside a very small hermetically sealed spaced with a Will Smith fart. You don’t even wanna be sitting next to him at the Disney ranch.”
Smith and Jones, 78, had to wait to give the scene another crack because “we evacuated the stage for about three hours,” said Sonnenfeld.
“Lovely guy, just… he farts. Some do, some don’t,” added the director, who worked with Smith again on Men in Black II and Men in Black 3.
“I don’t think Will eats a lot of carbohydrates, I’ll tell you that,” Sonnenfeld shared with host Kelly Ripa. “I spent four or five days at his place in Calabasas and we pretty much had boiled chicken and sliced tomatoes for five days.”
Earlier this year, Smith paid tribute to Men in Black at Coachella when he dressed as his character, Agent J, and performed the movie’s iconic theme song in a surprise appearance.
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The Oscar winner came out during J Balvin’s extraterrestrial-themed set on April 14, rapping and dancing in front of a giant alien head.
Toward the end of the performance, two other MIB agents escorted Balvin away from Agent J. Smith then brought out his neuralyzer — the memory-wiping tool from the Men in Black universe — to zap the audience and make it seem like the MIB agents were never there. Thankfully, clips of Smith’s performance weren’t affected, and excited fans shared his MIB comeback online soon after.