Will Smith’s Awkward Moment: 3-Hour Evacuation on ‘Men in Black’ Set!

During the podcast “Let’s Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa,” “Men in Black” director Barry Sonnenfeld dropped a bombshell – almost literally! He disclosed that the set of the 1997 action-comedy had to be cleared for “about three hours” due to a fart from Will Smith!

As you may know, Will Smith starred alongside Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black, which grossed $584 million globally, making it the third highest-grossing film of 1997. Along with his success in “Independence Day” the previous year, the movie propelled him to global superstardom.

According to Sonnenfeld, the incident occurred during a scene where Smith and Jones were in a high-speed, transforming car that flips over. To shoot the sequence, both actors had to be “hermetically sealed” inside the pod that served as the car.

“There are locks to prevent it from opening and falling out,” the director explained. “I say, ‘Roll camera.’ And I hear Will Smith say, ‘Oh my God, I am so sorry. Tommy, I am really sorry. Baz, get the ladder.’ And you hear Tommy say, ‘It’s okay, Will. Don’t worry, Will. Don’t worry, Will.’ At that point, I don’t know what’s happened, right?”

He continued, “So we run to get the ladder. Yes, Tommy stretches his leg as the ladder arrives, and rushes down the stairs. And what happened was that Will Smith is a farter,” simply put by Barry Sonnenfeld. “It’s just that some people are. And you really don’t want to be in a very small, sealed space with a Will Smith fart. You wouldn’t even want to sit next to him at the Disney ranch.”

He finally concluded: “We had to evacuate the set for about three hours. And it’s incredible. No, he’s a lovely guy. It’s just that he farts. Some do, some don’t.”

The director also helmed the two sequels to Men in Black with Will Smith: Men in Black II in 2002 and Men in Black III in 2012. Neither of the sequels, however, reached the box office heights of the original 1997 film, and Josh Brolin joined the cast in the third installment.

Men in Black (1997) is available for streaming on Netflix.

Listen to the full interview with Barry Sonnenfeld here.