"Parents Finally Understand"

For the nearly 25 years that Will Smith has been in the Hollywood scene, nothing has proven to be impossible for him. From bringing positively and humor to hip-hop as one half of DJ Jazzy Jeff And The Fresh Prince to becoming an instant TV star on the hit sitcom The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air to becoming one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in enormous hits such as the Bad Boys movies, Independence Day, the Men In Black movies, Hitch, The Pursuit Of Happyness, and scores of others, the West Philadelphia native has managed to consistently outdo himself every step of the way.

However, after a three year hiatus from acting, the 43 year-old has returned to one of his most seminal roles as secret government agent J in Men In Black 3. Smith says his decision to return to the franchise ten years after the release of Men In Black II was a no brainer for him.

“The idea of a secret government organization that polices alien activity on and off planet Earth, it’s so unique, you don’t say that this movie is just like Men In Black,” Will states, “There’s nothing that’s just like Men In Black. You can look at other movies and compare them to things.”

“Men In Black is a very distinct, very unique thing, and it’s difficult to have a fantasy comedy that works on that level,” he continues, “They tend to feel not smart or there is something in the DNA when it’s those two things that sort of dissipates. So for me, I was excited about the degree of difficulty and I haven’t worked in three years, so I wanted to put on some shoes that I knew fit.”

Will says there was another part to his strategy about coming back with a third Men In Black

“It was very important for me, having been away that long, one, having me come back in a way that was comfortable, and to come back

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with a project that was kid-friendly,” he says, “And that was something that Eddie Murphy had said to me a few years ago.”

“He said, ‘Man, if you’re lucky enough to be in this business, every 20 years, you got to go back and get the kids. Go get the kids,’” Smith adds, “With Dr. Dolittle and The Klumps and everything and the idea of maturing and then you go back and drop something. And what’s great for me is that target audience is in my house, so I get the scene-by-scene, screenplay-by-screenplay, run it by the judges.”

Smith talks about how much the business of making a blockbuster summer movie has changed since his last one in 2008 with Hancock.

“Well, it’s a thing that I’ve been paying attention to for a lot of years,” he says, “I was in Australia in 1990 with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis and they were opening Planet Hollywood. So I was out there while I was just in my first year of The Fresh Prince [Of Bel-Air]. I’m down there, I’m like, ‘Yo, this is crazy.’ So they’re sitting around and I go in there and I’m sitting there with those guys and Arnold sits there and he goes (begins speaking in an Austrian accent), ‘Young man, I want you to know, you cannot be a movie star only in the United States. You’re only a movie star if they know you around the world.’ Right?”

“And then, Bruce talked about it for a little and I was like, all right, so they put that idea into my mind very clearly and then, from that point, that’s when I started making it a point to open new markets,” Will continues, “We went into Russia with I. Robot, we went into Brazil, and the idea is that you create that around the world and that’s when you hold a movie star. It used to be at the time where you

"Parents Finally Understand"

can just have hit movies in the United States, but that’s not the case. And as you can see, the world of cinema is opening up even more, so to me, it’s just about taking those laps around the world to maintain that.”

It was asked of the usually-omnipresent Will why it’s been so long acting since his last film, the 2008 drama Seven Pounds.

“I’ve been producing with the kids and with [wife] Jada [Pinkett-Smith],” Smith explains.

The films he’s produced in that time consist of The Karate Kid remake, which starred his son Jaden Smith and This Means War. Smith’s also guided the budding acting and singing career of his daughter Willow Smith as well. He talks about how being a producer for him is different than being an actor.

“I think it’s where I’m most natural, at my most natural lane, I think, is producing, the wide view, seeing everything that’s going on, and helping, and pulling people in,” he believes, “But when you stay away from acting for a while, it’s like a muscle. You get out there and you look stupid, so it’s like you got to warm up a little bit and Ive been away from it.”

“The time was well-spent,” Smith adds, “There is a little bit of a blend. I learned a lot of valuable lessons on The Karate Kid. Working on a remake is interesting in that you start with hindsight, right, so that was an interesting thing, you can spell out and see the patterns of why people cheer in a movie theatre much more clearly and you get to experiment with your idea, so for me, that was very informative. And just coming back to Men In Black 3 just felt like home.”

In the film, J must travel back in time to 1969 and race against the clock to stop an impending alien invasion and save the life of his partner and mentor, K, played by Tommy Lee Jones

"Parents Finally Understand"

and encounters K’s past self, played by newcomer Josh Brolin. Smith talks about how Brolin was able to keep up with the already familiar chemistry of J and K between him and Jones.

“That’s what was crazy, that was all Josh Brolin,” he claims, “As actors, when you’re in a scene, it’s like a tennis match, you’re going back and forth. Me and Brolin have very different chemistry than me and Tommy Lee Jones. And what you do as an actor is you try to find the lanes and develop the chemistry, so I was expecting to make an adjustment from Tommy Lee Jones to Josh Brolin, but Josh studied Tommy so thoroughly that it was almost identical, like just that the way that the interactiions were.”

“In the scene, you make a move,” Will adds, “Which way the guy goes, it was absolutely stunning and it’s crazy because you don’t even notice how good his acting is because it’s so good, you’re watching Tommy Lee Jones. You don’t know that’s Josh Brolin. People thought that Tommy did the voice for the Josh Brolin character. That’s how thoroughly Josh is delivering it.”

Will talks about the emotional surprise that comes out of the end of the film.

“Did you see my acting transition?” Smith says, “I think, especially the surprise at the end of the movie, that was thing that was really got everybody excited to want to make this movie, that it was a little bit beyond just getting together and having some fun, it was like, wow, that was an interesting way to tie up the series and get you all the way back to the beginning.”

“And I like that people are surprised, like, whoa, no one really sees that coming,” he continues, “Some people see it coming, those amongst us that are so far ahead, but it was beautiful to come back together after this many years. And even the new guy, Josh Brolin, coming into

"Parents Finally Understand"

that, the way that he was able to deliver on the same energy that people are used to experiencing in these movies.”

While Men In Black II was relatively successful back in 2002, critics were left underwhelmed by its adherence to the formula of the original. Smith talks about how it was important for him for the third one, by comparison, to change direction.

“It was very important,” he says, “We’re all ten years older from the second movie and different things are important to us in our lives. We’re growing and you want to have the same kind of dumb, the same kind of silly that the first two movies had, so there’s an appreciation of the silly that the comedy delivers, but it was really important for us also to have some meat to chew on and create something.”

“Toy Story 3 did a really great job of advancing it, but also creating the underlying depth,” Will continues, “So if you’re going into the third part of something, it was really important going into deliver more emotionally.”

Will talks about his favorite device of Men In Black 3.

“It has to be the time dial,” Smith says, “Somebody needs to come up with a Time Jump app. That idea, I’ve always loved time travel. And I started for this movie to actually dive into it and thinking about it and talking about it. I realized, for black people, you don’t want to do too much jumping into the past. It’s pretty like right now is the best it’s ever been. It was like, yeah, maybe the time dial, I can go forward with it, that would be a great thing.”

For the third film, it will be released in 3D. Will talks about how he felt the 3D technology, which has gotten a fairly mixed reception, in the wake of its widespread use since Avatar, had to also be approached differently than what had been done previously.

“Well, my first

"Parents Finally Understand"

concern with being in 3D was my ears, because I could see these things pretty much taking over the whole of the screen,” Smith says, “But when I first saw and they were cool and it was like alright, they didn’t have me looking like satellite dishes. But then, the idea of special effects now. You can see anything. Like there’s no limitations with special effects. Probably the last five or six years, there’s absolutely no limitation of what you can see on screen anymore. It’s funny, because the same thing with the music business, when the music business went to digital, when you can do anything, when you can record anything, a number of tracks, as soon as it exploded, it has a weird opposite effect where it gets worse for a while, which is really strange.”

“It’s like as soon as you get all the tools to do anything, it’s like, all of a sudden, now the movies aren’t as good, and it’s like how the hell does that happen?” he continues, “So I think we’re about to turn that corner with the 3D specifically and Men In Black, I think what [director] Barry [Sonnenfeld] did was he found the balance of not throwing things at the audience. The 3D is the screen and back, which he went for depth, which makes it more pleasing to the eye. He decided to go with the conversion. We tried to work with the actual 3D cameras, but he went with the conversion and I think it just gives you a greater opportunity to dial it in and make it more pleasurable.”

Smith talks about shooting the film in the New York, which had attracted some controversy with his fairly large trailer having been parked in SoHo.

“Anytime you shoot in New York, it’s always hectic because New York actually becomes a character in the movie,” Will explains, “But that’s an important part of the Men In Black series,

"Parents Finally Understand"

so we were back there, I think we shot four months in New York and then the rest was on the streets and some of the stuff was on stage.”

Will also talks about how it was important for the fairly complex time travel plot to work credibly in the film.

“The thing that I have learned in my extensive study of time travel is that if you change one thing, you change everything,” Smith says, “So I am absolutely ecstatic about where my life is right now, so I wouldn’t mess with anything.”

“Everything I’ve experienced, everything that’s gone right or wrong in my mind has turned out to be alright,” he adds, “So I feel like that’s the nature of energy, that I get to decide whether it’s right or wrong or good or bad. My life, as I sit here today, is absolutely perfect, so I’m messing with nothing.”

Smith says that despite all his enormous success, he has learned that even with his youngest fans, he still best internationally known for The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air.

“You know what’s crazy for me is that The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air is the biggest thing I’ve ever done,” he says, “Like when I go around, I’m the Fresh Prince everywhere in the world.”

“It’s just amazing how that television show, and it was really sort of a stroke of luck, it’s because of the amount of outlets for the show that a nine-year old kid thinks is new,” Will adds, “A nine year-old kid in Moscow thinks it’s brand new, so when I show up, it’s as if it’s brand new. So The Fresh Prince has been a huge gift for me in that sense.”

Will says that in his hometown, his youngest fans know him in a different capacity.

“In Philly, the kids were like, ‘Mr. Willow! Mr. Willow!’” Smith says.

Smith was asked about the importance of attracting a potential younger generation of fans with Men In Black 3.

“Well, that’s

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what I tell Jaden. Jaden is probably the one of my kids, he looks at me like I’m meat, like, ‘I’m coming for you. You just have no idea.,’” Will says, “He’s looking across the dinner table at me. Jaden is extremely competitive. I tell him all the time, ‘You know what, son, listen, I’m going to teach you everything I know and you’re going to work hard and you’ll be the second biggest movie star in the world.’”

Will was also asked if his own children tended to be his biggest critics.

“Jaden can’t figure out how people thought it was OK for me to wear the clothes I was wearing on Fresh Prince,” Smith says, “That’s his thing. He was like, ‘Dude, that shouldn’t even be on TV.’ Willow more gets it and understands.”

“But with the kids in the house, it’s really great for me because they help me stay aware,” he continues, “They help me stay current, and follow trends and things like that. Even the idea of something as simple as Instagram is an entirely new outlet. It’s like the fans are consuming entertainment differently and if you miss on that, you turn into a dinosaur really quickly.”

Smith had this to say about what he believes he’s taken away the last three years since the last film he’s acted in.

“It was just that, I was a child of Dallas, so I’ve dreamed about this life my entire life, right?” he says, “So on Dallas, they had South Fork, the property had a name. And Sue Ellen would come to breakfast and J.R. was there and it was like the whole family and everybody worked the family business. That was my vision of my family. So, for me, coming into that space, I’m actually surprised that other people got their own vision.”

“Like Willow made a huge hit record, “Whip My Hair”, then she cut her hair off,” Will adds, “It’s like, ‘Hey! What are

"Parents Finally Understand"

you doing?’ So it was like, for me, the last three years of seeing just how much everybody has their own opinion and everybody has their own ideas and everybody has their own lives that may or may not fit in my Sue Ellen vision.”

Will was asked about the status on a possible remake of the 1974 Sidney Poitier-Bill Cosby comedy Uptown Saturday Night with Denzel Washington.

“Uptown, we’re working on it, trying to get it together, me and Denzel [Washington],” he says of it, “So that would be a great thing, considering the material has to be right to deserve all that manpower.”

“We would try to figure it out as we got into it and see who’s more comfortable,” he adds, “Because when I first asked Denzel, he was like, ‘I’m not funny, man.’ And I’m saying like, ‘That was funny, that you said that.’ So he was a little concerned about the comedy and I’m like, ‘Man, come on. It’s going to be fantastic.”

Will was also asked about the status of a potential third Bad Boys film.

“I love making those movies,” Smith says, “It’s Miami, it’s the tight T-shirt, and fast cars and it’s just at this point in my career, the material has to be right. It’s like just because it’s a popcorn movie doesn’t mean it doesn’t have something to say.”

“And that to me, that’s hugely important,” he continues, “I’m 43 and I’m probably looking at seven more years where I can run and jump a little bit and then I’m going butt and gut for the rest of my career.”

Smith also shared his thoughts on Saturday Night Live cast member Jay Pharoah, who has done impersonations of him among others on the show, as well as why he has not done the show himself yet.

“I met him a few months ago,” Will says of him, “He got Denzel. He don’t exactly have me perfect. I’m about to spend some time with

"Parents Finally Understand"

him, he can get me just perfect. I’ve never done SNL, we have to figure that out. The timing’s never been perfect for that. I’ll go on there and I hear everybody say it’s great and it’s a tough week that’s fantastic, so I’ve never done it. Maybe, we’ll see, next flick.”

Will was asked if he still felt nervous at all about a finished movie coming out for the first time.

“It’s diarrhea,” Smith jokes, “It’s all diarrhea now. It’s expanded.”