Men in Black director says Will Smith’s farts forced them to evacuate the stage for three hours

Barry Sonnenfeld says Will Smith’s farts on the set of Men in Black actually forced them to evacuate the set for three hours.

Everybody farts. That’s just a fact. Some do it more than others, but I don’t know how many people can cause an actual evacuation with one. While speaking on the Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa podcast, Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld revealed that Will Smith once caused a three-hour-long evacuation with one of his farts on the set of the 1997 movie. That’s… impressive?

Barry Sonnenfeld said that the fart in question occurred during a scene in which Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones were “hermetically sealed” in a pod used for filming the transforming car. “There are locks to prevent it from opening and falling,” Sonnenfeld said. “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.’ Anyway, I don’t know what’s gone on, right?“

Sonnenfeld continued, “So we race the ladder over. Yeah, Tommy reaches his leg out as the ladder is coming over, races down the stairs. And what happened was, Will Smith is a faster. 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. You don’t even want to 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.“

Tommy Lee Jones would return to star alongside Will Smith for Men in Black II and Men in Black 3, so clearly, those intense farts weren’t a deal breaker. The last film in the franchise, Men in Black: International, was the first not to feature Smith or Jones. It starred Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson and moved the location to the London branch of MiB. Unfortunately, the film was a critical and financial disappointment and spelled the end of the Men in Black franchise, at least for now. There was a potential Men in Black/21 Jump Street crossover movie in the works, but it was ultimately scrapped.