The 1995 scene Will Smith tried his hardest to not shoot: “You’re wrong!”
Back in the day, more than 30 years ago, in fact, long before he went mental and slapped a fellow celebrity in front of millions, and long before he did loads of bizarre podcasts about spiritual journeys, Will Smith was a super-cool action movie star.
There was no denying that; it was just a fact. Anyone who can climb onto a crashed spaceship, rip open the top of it and smash the nasty, world-invading alien right in the face before lighting up a cigar and saying “Welcome to Earth” is immensely cool. Or rather was, because as we know, Will Smith isn’t very cool anymore.
And that’s not likely to change now, because no matter how many street rap performances in King’s Cross he does, he’s still the guy who provided possibly the most eye-gougingly cringeworthy moment in modern TV history when he assaulted Chris Rock live at the Oscars and then screamed at him while crying, for making what was, in all fairness, not even that offensive a joke.
So, in order to see the best of Smith, you have to time-travel back to when he was the wisecracking, multi-million dollar movie leading, muscle-bound film star that men wanted to be like and women wanted to have open jars for them, and stick on a DVD and enjoy his mid-1990s peak, in stuff like Independence Day and Bad Boys. The latter of those was directed by ‘Mr lens flare’ himself, Michael Bay, the fellow behind blockbusters like Armageddon and Transformers, and it seems that pitching the two men together resulted in something of a battle of egos and creative vision, if Smith’s own memoirs are to be believed.
Although he was already a big star thanks to the success of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the movie was Smith’s first major role, and to some degree, he was at the mercy of whatever the director threw at him, not that it meant he wouldn’t push back. Recalling filming the buddy cop action hit, Smith wrote, “One day, Michael Bay and I had one of our biggest disputes. This was the first time I had ever worked out. I had put on 12 pounds, and for the first time in my life, I had muscles. There’s a famous scene where my character chases a car on foot over a bridge. Michael was demanding that I do the scene with no shirt.”
Smith complained that he felt doing the scene topless was corny and uncalled for, leading Bay to reply, “It’s Miami, dude. You’re a badass cop. Take your fucking shirt off”. Smith had only just bulked up for the role and wasn’t yet comfortable with his new muscles; the thought of standing around without a shirt on set proved intimidating. He again complained to Bay, saying he felt it was a cliché to see an action hero ‘greased up’ and topless.
But Bay was having none of it, yelling at him: “You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong! No shirt, dude! Just take it off. Trust me and do what I say. I’m trying to make you a superhero! This is your breakout!”
In the end, a compromise was reached, which was that Smith would wear a shirt, but it had to stay unbuttoned. Smith channelled one of his heroes, Olympic sprinter Carl Lewis, and sprinted as fast as he could for the scene, shirt flapping around, six-pack on display.
Bay was happy with the result as he shouted “cut”, informing Smith, “I just made you a fucking movie star!” He may well have had a point too, for Bad Boys made ten times its budget and spawned a franchise that was still going as of 2024. Within two years, Smith was the highest-paid male movie actor on the planet.
