Will Smith’s career could have looked very different if he hadn’t taken advice from a few key industry players.
Smith sat down with comedian Kevin Hart on his Peacock talk series, Hart to Hart, in which he explained why he ultimately decided to star in Men in Black and a number of other films that helped cement him into the movie star he is today.
“I kind of understood Men in Black, but I didn’t want to make Men in Black,” he recalled, per Entertainment Weekly. “That was the next year after Independence Day. So, I didn’t want to make two alien movies back to back.”
When Hart asked how he got convinced to make the iconic sci-fi comedy, Smith replied, “Steven Spielberg sent a helicopter for me.”
Hilariously enough, Hart was stunned into silence. “You’re a goddamn liar,” he replied.
Smith continued explaining, “It landed at his house, and he had me at hello.” He added that Spielberg served him carbonated lemonade while they talked, which he had never had before. “You can’t say no to that, dude.”
“[Spielberg] said the coldest s**t,” Smith recalled. “He said, tell me why you don’t want to make my movie …” Smith then pointed out that Spielberg didn’t direct the movie, but rather served as an executive producer on the Barry Sonnenfield flick.
He joked, “He put the ellipses at the end [of the statement] … if he had continued, he woulda said, ‘Joker, you know I made Jaws, right? You know I made E.T.‘”
The actor also credited his longtime business partner and film producer James Lassiter with picking Men in Black for him to consider, amongst other classics from Smith’s filmography.
“He just had an eye. I didn’t want to make Pursuit of Happyness, I didn’t want to make Ali,” he said.
“JL was the arbiter of taste. So in the heyday, the 10 movies I made at the top of my career, JL was choosing the films,” he told Hart.
Smith went on to earn his first two Oscar nominations for Best Actor because of Ali and Pursuit of Happyness.
However, it wasn’t until 2022 that Smith would win in the category for portraying Venus and Serena Williams‘ father in King Richard.
Lassiter is credited as an executive producer of many of Smith’s projects, including the 2020 Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Reunion, King Richard, Bad Boys for Life, and I Am Legend.
This story originally appeared on Decider and is republished here with permission.