Will Smith apparently left a lingering impression on Men in Black film director Barry Sonnenfeld, who raised a stink about Smith's intense farts on set.
"You really don't wanna be inside a very small hermetically sealed space with a Will Smith fart," said Sonnenfeld while recalling his time working with Smith in the 1997 sci-fi comedy film about government agents monitoring and policing extraterrestrials.
Smith's gassiness was so intense, that production on MIB was brought to a halt and the set had to be evacuated for "at least three hours."
Sonnenfeld recalled the incident when Kelly Ripa, as host of her Let's Talk Off Camera podcast, asked him to share the "number one crazy story" from working on all three MIB films.
The anecdote that immediately came to mind for the director was when Smith and his costar Tommy Lee Jones were sitting together in a futuristic car that transformed into a hypervehicle.
Little did Jones know at the time he was about to be enclosed in a Dutch oven.
"We have to bring a ladder over on wheels like the old days when you would get on airplanes from the tarmac, and we get them up there and we put them in the thing and we turn it upside down, and we're ready to shoot," recalled Sonnenfeld of scene's set-up process.
He continued:
"And they're hermetically sealed in this space, and there are locks to prevent it from opening and falling."
During the shoot, Smith let one rip so badly that he had to apologize for the toxic fumes.
"I say 'Roll camera, and I hear Will Smith go, 'Oh, Jesus. So sorry. Tommy, so sorry. Baz, get the ladder!' "
You can listen to some of the interview here.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
Sonnenfeld said of Smith's calm response:
"You hear Tommy saying, 'That's fine, Will. No worries, Will. Don't worry, Will.'"
"I don't know what's going on. So we race the ladder over. Tommy reaches his leg out as the ladder is coming over, races down the stairs."
Sonnenfeld declared:
"Will Smith is a farter. Some people are. And you really don't wanna be inside a very small hermetically sealed space with a Will Smith fart."
"You don't even wanna be sitting next to him at the Disney ranch."
Ripa asked if the stench escaped from the space chamber after the actors were released, to which Sonnenfeld said:
"We evacuated the stage for, about 3 hours. He's, you know, a lovely guy. Just, he farts."
When Ripa inquired if Smith's diet may have had something to do with his flatulence, Sonnenfeld replied:
"Well, I don't think he'll eat a lot of carbohydrates. I'll tell you that."
"I spent four or five days at his place in Calabasas, and we pretty much had boiled chicken and sliced tomatoes for five days."
Despite the olfactory assaults, Sonnenfeld and Smith maintained a friendly working relationship as they reteamed for the 1999 film Wild Wild West and two more MIB sequels in 2002 and 2012.
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