Men in Black director says Will Smith fart forced three-hour set evacuation

‘You really don’t want to be inside a very small hermetically sealed space with a Will Smith fart,’ said Barry Sonnenfeld

Men In Black director Barry Sonnenfeld has claimed Will Smith farted so badly during the production of the 1997 sci-fi comedy that the set had to be evacuated “for about three hours.”

Smith and Tommy Lee Jones co-starred in the box office hit that helped make the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air actor an A-list movie star. The actors portrayed Agent K and Agent J, respectively, who are tasked with investigating a series of alien incidents on earth.

Speaking on the podcast “Let’s Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa”, Sonnenfeld recalled that the incident occurred while they were filming a scene in which Smith and Jones were supposedly travelling in a car that was able to flip upside down at high speeds to drive along the roof of a tunnel.

To pull off the stunt, the pair were “hermetically sealed” inside a pod.

“There are locks to prevent it from opening and falling,” Sonnenfeld explained.

“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 saying, ‘That’s fine, Will. No worries, Will. Don’t worry, Will.’ Anyway, I don’t know what’s gone on, right?

Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith in ‘Men in Black’ (Sony)

“So we race the ladder over. Yeah, Tommy reaches his leg out as the ladder is coming over, races down the stairs. And what happened was... 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 space with a Will Smith fart. You don’t even want to be sitting next to him at the Disney ranch.”

Sonnenfeld concluded his story: “We evacuated the stage for about three hours. And that’s incredible. No, he’s, you know, a lovely guy. Just, he farts. Some do, some don’t.”

Last year, Smith revealed how producer Steven Spielberg convinced him to star in Men in Black.

During an on Kevin Hart’s Heart to Hart talk show, Smith said he had been hesitant to star in the movie right after Independence Day.“I kind of understood Men in Black a little bit but I didn’t want to make Men in Black,” Smith said. “That was the next year after Independence Day. So I didn’t want to make two alien movies back to back.”

According to Smith, Spielberg contacted him directly and sent a helicopter so they could speak face-to-face.

“I was in New York. It landed at his house. And, like, he had me at hello,” the star said. “And it was the first time I ever had lemonade with carbonated water. You can’t say no to that.”

The Oscar-winner recalled how Spielberg “said the coldest s***”.

“He said, ‘Tell me why you don’t want to make my movie…’ And he was the producer,” said Smith.

“And he put the ellipsis at the end, it was the dot, dot, dot. If he had continued, he would have said, ‘Joker, you know I made Jaws, right? You know I made ET.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Smith said that “nobody” in his family had been “happy” amid their rising fame in 2010.

“It was my first realisation that success and money don’t mean happiness,” the King Richard actor said.