Sir Ian McKellen confronted Will Smith after he refused to kiss another man on-screen
Topics: Film and TV, Entertainment, Will Smith
Dominic Smithers
Featured Image Credit: PA Images/Alamy/UPI/Alamy
Topics: Film and TV, Entertainment, Will Smith
When Will Smith was a fledgling actor trying to make a name for himself outside the rap game, one of his first roles was as a gay hustler, starring alongside Sir Ian McKellen.
The 1993 movie Six Degrees of Separation saw Smith play a conman who charms a wealthy couple in New York's high society.
However, while Smith was praised for his performance, it was later revealed that some of the cast weren't best pleased with his behaviour.
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Despite his character being homosexual, the Fresh Prince star refused to kiss his co-star Anthony Michael Hall on-camera.
And it didn't go down well with Sir Ian, who later spoke about working with Smith on the film.
In an interview with Time Out London a few years ago, McKellen said he actually ended up confronting his co-star over the matter.
"[Smith] arrived for the read-through with a huge entourage — his family, his agent, his publicity person, his acting coach, his nanny,” he recalled.
"He was a charmer, and a good actor. But he did one silly thing: he refused to kiss another boy on screen, even though it was there in the script.
“Which was why, at an early preview, I met him in public outside the cinema and gave him a great big kiss on the lips."
Smith later apologised for his actions and said that he had learned from it.
In December 1993, he told Entertainment Weekly: "It was very immature on my part.
“I was thinking, ‘How are my friends in Philly going to think about this?’
"I wasn’t emotionally stable enough to artistically commit to that aspect of the film… This was a valuable lesson for me. Either you do it, or you don’t.”
It's safe to say on one of his more recent movies, Smith's fellow actors have been much more impressed with how he's conducted himself.
It was revealed recently that he personally paid some actors playing dead bodies in the Antoine Fuqua drama Emancipation.
"He was kind to everyone on the set," Fuqua told Vanity Fair.
"Will would go around and hug and shake hands - we had 300-something extras and military. Marines.
“We had to stop Will from doing that because of Covid."
He added: “He’s funny. He’s fun. We had certain extras that were the dead bodies in the graves, and he would go give them money for laying there in that heat over 100 degrees.”