When Will Smith Let It RIP on the Set of MIB

Photo: Columbia Pictures/YouTube

Barry Sonnenfeld has fully transitioned into the “unfettered yapping” stage of celebrity. First you’re an up-and-comer, then you become established and learn all sorts of secrets, then you let all the secrets spill out of you. It’s like that game at Dave & Busters with the quarters. Eventually enough quarters/anecdotes pile up that they all fall out at once. Sonnenfeld is making the rounds plugging his second memoir, Best Possible Place, Worst Possible Time. And there was one story he just couldn’t hold in any more.

On Kelly Ripa’s Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast, Sonnenfeld told a tale of a toot. A nuclear-level fart from Will Smith that halted production on Men in Black for three hours. The gas was passed while shooting the upside-down car scene, which necessitated a rig in which Smith and Tommy Lee Jones had to be hermetically sealed. “We were getting ready to shoot Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, and Tommy does not suffer fools, I’ll tell you that,” he said. Famously, Tommy Lee Jones could not sanction Jim Carrey’s buffoonery on Batman Forever. But he had a lot more grace in his heart for Will Smith, even after getting crop dusted by the Fresh Prince. 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.’”

Sonnenfeld comes to find out Smith farted, and apparently his farts are frequent and notably stinky. “What happened was, 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,” Sonnenfeld told Ripa, who didn’t ask to be involved in this narrative. “You don’t even want to be sitting next to him at the Disney ranch.” He then said the whole stage had to be “evacuated” for three hours. “And that’s incredible. He’s a lovely guy, just he farts. Some do, some don’t.” Some don’t? Barry, Barry, did Everybody Poops and its sequels teach you nothing?