Barry Sonnenfeld recently made an appearance on Kelly Ripa’s podcast ‘Let’s Talk Off Camera’ and discussed his new memoir, ‘Best Possible Place, Worst Possible Time.’ He also shared an anecdotes where they had to evacuate the ‘Men in Black’ set due to a ‘Will Smith fart.’
“We were getting ready to shoot Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, and Tommy does not suffer fools, I’ll tell you that,” Sonnenfeld recalled. “They have to be put in this device, which is [a car] that transforms into a hyper car, and [they’re] going to go through the Midtown tunnel upside down.”
“We have to bring a ladder over on wheels like it’s like the old days when you would get on airplanes from the tarmac. We get them up there and we put them in the thing and we turn it upside down and we’re ready to shoot.”
The scene required both stars to be tightly sealed into a specially designed device for the film to prevent them from falling out, leaving them in close quarters.
The director continued, “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.’”
They quickly moved a ladder over to release the actors, and Jones rushed down the stairs to get out. “What happened was, Will Smith is a farter,” Sonnenfeld explained. “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.”
He added that the entire set had to take a break for about three hours but noted, “And that’s incredible. He’s a lovely guy, just he farts. Some do, some don’t.”
Smith, Jones, and Sonnenfeld continued to work together in the following years, reuniting for two ‘Men in Black’ sequels in 2002 and 2012.
