After the controversy that Will Smith experienced when he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, the famous publicly reappeared, this time at the AAFCA (Association of African American Film Critics) awards where he was recognized with the Beacon Award for his work on the film Emancipation.
To stage, Will Smith came up accompanied by the director of his new film, Antoine Fuqua. It was during his speech that the actor told an anecdote that he lived during the recording of Emancipation and that left more than one surprised.
“Emancipation was the single most difficult film of my entire career. It’s really hard to transport a modern mind back to that time period. It’s hard to imagine that level of inhumanity,” Will Smith said at the beginning of his speech.
Later, the Oscar winner commented that during the recording of the film a white actor, of which he did not reveal his identity, he spat on him on more than one occasion in a scene.
“It was the second day of shooting. I was in a scene with one of the white actors, and we had our lines, and the actor decided to improvise. So, we’re doing the scene. I did my line. He did the line of it. And then he decided to improvise. So we were doing the scene: I did my line, he did his line, and then he spat right in the middle of my chest.”
Because they repeated the scene several timesWill Smith was spat on by the other actor until the director of the film asked him not to do it again.
“The actor thought the improvisation had gone well. So we did the second take: I do my line, he does his, and he spits in the middle of my chest again… In the distance, I hear a voice, it was Antoine saying: ‘Hey, let’s do a take without the spit.’ And in that moment, I knew that God was real.”
PJG
