Will Smith Almost Beat Up A Star For Kissing His Wife On Camera
Will Smith’s infamous Oscar slap is still fresh in some people’s minds, but apparently, the actor also had a fairly heated incident over his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, on the set of the 1998 film Woo. In Living Color and Woo star Tommy Davidson’s 2020 memoir Living in Color: What’s Funny About Me detailed the incident, in which Davidson said that he didn’t find the original ending of the film satisfying, and he ended up springing a kiss on Jada while filming, even though they hadn’t discussed or rehearsed the kiss beforehand. Davidson went on to say that Will wasn’t too happy with the improvisation.
In the book, Davidson said, “Will (Smith) went all gangsta on me, saying what I did was not cool. There was a moment there when we might have come to blows. My reactive fight-or-flight instinct was triggered and I could have exploded.” (via People)
“Will (Smith) went all gangsta on me, saying what I did was not cool. There was a moment there when we might have come to blows. My reactive fight-or-flight instinct was triggered and I could have exploded.”
Tommy Davidson dicussing Will Smith on the set of Woo
While it’s true that actors in committed relationships often kiss their co-stars, Tommy Davidson was definitely in the wrong for not asking Jada Pinkett Smith about adding in a kiss before he planted one on her. As he says in the book, “I didn’t know this: You have to rehearse a kiss,” adding, “You can’t just spring it on your costar … And I didn’t think it was all that big of a deal.” Will Smith may have been in the wrong when he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, but a non-consensual kiss is quite a bit different than a joke about someone’s hair (and Smith didn’t end up actually hitting Davidson).
Still, it seems like things were eventually smoothed over, as Jada ended up intervening in the argument between Will Smith and Davidson. Davidson would eventually even appear on Jada’s talk show Red Table Talk. Davidson would even credit Jada with helping him meet his birth mother during his appearance. Apparently, she noticed that Davidson seemed troubled and learned that his biological mother had called him after his adoptive mother contacted her.
“I didn’t know this: You have to rehearse a kiss,” adding, “You can’t just spring it on your costar … And I didn’t think it was all that big of a deal.”
Tommy Davidson on surprising Jada Pinkett-Smith with a kiss
Upon learning this, Jada would stop filming on Woo for the day so Davidson could handle the situation without being distracted, which he said eventually led to him “finally meeting my real mom.” So, while it seems like Davidson’s relationship with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith started out a bit rocky, things ended up going in a different direction afterward. Thankfully, the situation didn’t have to come to blows for them to get things resolved, either.
While Will Smith’s incident on the set of Woo was heated, the argument was ultimately private and was understandable from Will’s perspective. Smith was more recently in the news for his Oscar incident, which was far more public and is something that he’s still facing the consequences of due to his ban from Academy events. While Smith would win the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as King Richard at that same ceremony, his project output has been relatively muted since then.
Unlike the Oscars incident with Chris Rock, Will Smith’s argument with Tommy Davidson wasn’t caught on camera.
Shortly after the Oscar incident, Will Smith starred in the Apple TV+ film Emancipation, where he played a runaway slave escaping through the swamps of Louisana. Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Equalizer) directed, and Smith starred, which would normally garner a lot more attention. However, the marketing efforts for the film were relatively quiet due to the release’s proximity to the slap incident.
As for when we’ll see Will Smith in a new project, we may have to wait a while. The actor is set to return to the long-awaited fourth entry to his Bad Boys franchise alongside his co-star Martin Lawrence in 2024. The film supposedly completed filming before the beginning of the SAF-AFTRA strike, so there’s a good chance that Bad Boys 4 will be able to stick to its June 14 release date, but we’ll have to wait and see for now.
