Will Smith said in an interview that for a time in his career, he was reluctant to accept certain roles. Among the many was Men in Black, where Steven Spielberg stepped in to convince him.
In an interview with the talk show Kevin Hart, also known as “Heart to the Heart”, Will Smith he told several anecdotes related to his career. The actor said that he was on the verge of not accepting many of the roles that brought him success at the time, such as the role Men in Black. In addition to thanking the man who was his agent at the time, the Oscar winner recalls how Steven Spielberg I’m trying to get him to accept this character.
Will Smith’s reluctance
Thinking about Will Smith, dozens and dozens of films that have become a real cult of modern cinema come to mind, from light films to more serious ones, the actor showed that he knows how to try his hand at different genres, but they were not always persuaded to accept these roles. Luckily, his former manager and business partner, James Lassiter, was more forward-thinking than he was and pushed him towards these contracts:
In my prime, all ten films I made at the peak of my career were JL’s picks. He had an eye. I didn’t want to do The Pursuit of Happyness. I didn’t want to be Ali. It was JL who chose Men in Black, I didn’t want to do that.
The reason he showed some reluctance to consider the Men in Black proposal was actually very simple:I didn’t want to make two films about aliens in a row.“, – said the actor.
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Will Smith in the movie “Men in Black”
Steven Spielberg Gesture
That’s why the film’s director decided to intervene personally, as Smith recounts during an interview, recalling with some sympathy the moment he met the director, in an unusual way to say the least:
Steven Spielberg sent me a helicopter. I was in New York. He sent it just to talk to me and delivered it to his house. He already convinced me to say hello. And that was the first time I drank lemonade with sparkling water. You can’t say no to something like that. It was very cold when he spoke to me. He told me, “Tell me, tell me why you don’t want to be in my film.” For diplomacy, he put an ellipsis at the end of the speech. If he had continued, he would have said, “Fool, you know I was in Jaws, right? Do you know what I did ET?”