“Men in Black” director Barry Sonnenfeld appeared on the “Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa” podcast and revealed the set of the 1997 action comedy once had to be evacuated “for about three hours” because Will Smith farted. Smith starred opposite Tommy Lee Jones in “Men in Black,” which grossed $584 million worldwide to become the third highest-grossing movie of 1997. Combined with the blockbuster success of “Independence Day,” the movie turned Smith into a global superstar.
According to Sonnenfeld, the incident occurred during the scene in which Smith and Jones are in a transforming car that travels at hyper speeds and flips over. In order to film the sequence, the two actors had to be “hermetically sealed” in the pod that was being used for the car.
“There are locks to prevent it from opening and falling,” Sonnenfeld said. “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?”
“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,” the director continued. “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, “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.”
The director would go on to helm two “Men in Black” sequels with Smith: 2002’s “Men in Black II” and 2012’s “Me in Black 3.” Neither movie reached the box office heights of the 1997 original. Brolin starred alongside Smith in both sequels.
Listen to Sonnenfeld’s full interview on the “Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa” podcast here.
