Will Smith has been the face of countless blockbusters throughout his career in film and music, though he didn’t always have the gift of clear judgement.
During an appearance on the Full Send Podcast that went live on Wednesday (June 5), the Philadelphia native reflected on nearly passing up one of his biggest movie roles.
“I did not want to make Pursuit Of Happyness,” he began at the 31:09 mark. “I was like, ‘Who wants to go to the movies to see a dude get a job in the 80s?’ The movie is about a guy who gets a job.
“It was a really great story, but y’know [my manager James Lassiter] has exquisite taste. He said, ‘I promise you’ […] I read and I loved it; I just didn’t think it had box-office viability, and it ended up making, y’know, $300 million.”
Will Smith has a history of being very particular about the work he puts out into the world under his name.
The 55-year-old and his Bad Boys co-star Martin Lawrence stopped by Hot 97 earlier this week to promote their new film. During the chat, the “Get Jiggy With It” hitmaker admitted that he wasn’t a fan of Quincy Jones’ original take on the The Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song, spurring him to make his own version with DJ Jazzy Jeff.
“So Quincy Jones was the producer of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” he said. “He was mentoring me. Quincy had done a theme song for Fresh Prince. And, you know, Quincy did Sanford and Son; Quincy did a thousand things that you don’t even know.
“So Quincy plays a theme song for The Fresh Prince. It was that old school [mimics a stereotypical sitcom theme]. So I listened and I was like, ‘Ohhh… wow…. yeah.’”
The Oscar winner said he then turned to close collaborator DJ Jazzy Jeff for advice on how to navigate the awkward situation.
“Jeff was at the hotel and I was like, ‘Jeff, Quincy played a theme song. Dude, it’s no good at all,’” he continued. “Jeff was like, ‘Just tell him, man, he’ll understand.’ I was like, ‘There ain’t no way I’m telling Quincy Jones […] I can’t do it, man. Quincy knows better than I know.’
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Smith remembered his peer playing him a different beat just a few hours later that he had made for the show, and the rest is history.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, that feels a little bit better.’ [Jeff] was like, ‘Yo, just write something,’” he explained. “So I wrote the theme song that night in the hotel room with Jeff. He had a four-track, we recorded it, and he was like, ‘Just play it for Quincy.’ And I was like, ‘Uhhhh.’
“So I played it for Quincy and he sat there and listened and I’m shaking and sweating. And he said, ‘Well, that’s better than that bullshit I did’ […] We did a whole record [with] a second verse, so Quincy made the edit and that became the theme song.
