Will Smith Farted So Badly 'Men in Black' Set Had to be Evacuated For 3 Hours, Says Director

Barry Sonnenfeld, the director of Men in Black, recently shared an incident on the podcast Let’s Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa. He recalled a strange incident where the set had to be evacuated for three hours due to a fart from Will Smith. This happened just as Smith and Tommy Lee Jones were all set to shoot a scene inside one of the special cars used by Men in Black agents. During filming, Smith and Jones were sealed inside a pod that was being used to represent the vehicle.

Speaking about the incident, Sonnenfeld said, “There are locks to prevent it from opening and falling. 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.’" The director said he had no idea what the apologies were about. As reported by People Magazine, the director added, “So we race the ladder over. Yeah, Tommy reaches his leg out as the ladder is coming over, and races down the stairs. And what happened was, that Will Smith is a farter. It’s just some people are [farters]."

He continued, "You really don't wanna be inside a very small hermetically sealed space with a Will Smith fart. You don't even wanna be sitting next to him at the Disney ranch. 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." Ripa then asked if Smith was on a high-protein diet that could have caused his gas. Sonnenfeld said, "Well, I don't think he'll eat a lot of carbohydrates. I'll tell you that. I spent four or five days at his place in Calabasas, and we pretty much had boiled chicken and sliced tomatoes for five days."

Smith and Sonnenfeld teamed up for the first Men in Black film back in 1997, as reported by Entertainment Weekly. Luckily, the fart incident didn’t create major problems, other than providing a funny behind-the-scenes incident about Smith. Last year, Smith also shared how producer Steven Spielberg persuaded him to take on the role in Men in Black. As reported by The Independent, he said, “I kind of understood Men in Black a little bit but I didn’t want to make Men in Black. That was the next year after Independence Day. So I didn’t want to make two alien movies back to back.”

Smith said that Spielberg reached out to him directly and sent a helicopter so they could talk in person. He said, “I was in New York. It landed at his house. And, like, he had me at hello. And it was the first time I ever had lemonade with carbonated water. You can’t say no to that.” Oscar-winner recalled, “He said, ‘Tell me why you don’t want to make my movie…’ And he was the producer. And he put the ellipsis at the end, it was the dot, dot, dot. If he had continued, he would have said, ‘Joker, you know I made Jaws, right? You know I made ET." Meanwhile, Sonnenfeld's book, Best Possible Time, Worst Possible Place, features more behind-the-scenes stories from his career.