'Men in Black' Director Claims Will Smith's Epic Fart Caused a Three-Hour Set Evacuation: 'That's Incredible'

Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld claims production shut down for several hours after Will Smith made a big stink on set. A literal stink. 

The filmmaker shared the incident during the Wednesday episode of Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa, nearly 30 years after the MIB trilogy kicked off. Sonnenfeld recalled shooting a scene in which Smith (Agent J) and his co-star Tommy Lee Jones (Agent K) were locked inside an airtight pod that resembled a sci-fi vehicle. However, the take was cut short after Sonnenfeld heard Smith profusely apologizing to Jones. 

“There are locks to prevent it from opening and falling,” Sonnenfeld said about the pod. “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 the team “race[d] the ladder” to the actors to see what was going on.

“Tommy reaches his leg out as the ladder is coming over, races down the stairs. And what happened was, Will Smith is a farter,” Sonnenfeld claimed. “It’s just some people are [farters].”

Yes, some people are more flatulent than others, but Smith’s stink bomb was apparently so epic that the crew had to evacuate the stage for several hours.

“You really don’t want to be inside a very small, hermetically sealed space with a Will Smith fart,” Sonnenfeld continued. “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.”

Sonnenfeld clearly didn’t let the Smith fart affect their working relationship, as they later teamed up on two more MIBsequels and the 1999 steampunk Western Wild Wild West.

“He’s, you know, a lovely guy,” Sonnenfeld continued. “Just, he farts. Some do, some don’t.”