Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld shared a hilarious behind-the-scenes story when they had to evacuate the set of the iconic 1997 sci-fi comedy “for about 3 hours” because of Will Smith’s NUCLEAR fart.
Speaking on the October 2 episode of the Let’s Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa podcast, Sonnenfeld recounted that Smith and his co-star Tommy Lee Jones were filming a scene inside a “hermetically sealed” chamber, which was designed to double as the interior of their characters’ car. The pair were upside down in the chamber when, according to Sonnenfeld, Smith let out a particularly powerful fart.
“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,” he shared while laughing hard.
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Will Smith is a farter: Sonnenfeld
“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.”
Jones quickly removed himself from the chamber. Sonnenfeld 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 space with a Will Smith fart,” and added, “You don’t even wanna be sitting next to him at the Disney ranch.”
The situation was serious enough that production had to be halted for approximately three hours. Sonnenfeld explained the reasoning behind the lengthy delay: “We evacuated the stage for about three hours.”
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“He’s, you know, a lovely guy. Just, he farts,” he quipped.
During the whole interview, Sonnenfeld gushes over how “lovely guy” Smith is while also noting, “Some do, some don’t,” referring to Smith’s tendency to let one slip.
