Will Smith recently appeared on The Tonight Show with host Jimmy Fallon and explained that a choice Michael Bay made behind the scenes of the original Bad Boys film, may have helped catapult Smith into movie stardom.
Fallon asks Smith about an iconic scene from the movie where Smith has his shirt open, to which he explains, “So Michael Bay was shooting this scene, and I wanted to have my shirt on. And Michael was like, ‘Dude, I’m gonna make you a frickin’ movie star! Take your shirt off.’ I was like, ‘Mike, come on man, running with your shirt off? Come on, man.’ And he was like ‘Dude, you don’t know! I know.’”
The two compromised and Smith rocked an unbuttoned shirt: “I was like Mike, ‘I have to have a shirt. I’ll have it open, just not off.’ And we compromised, and it was one of the iconic scenes from that movie.”
To this day, Bay apparently claims that Smith owes him for making him a movie star whenever the two run into each other.
The third installment in the Bad Boys series, Bad Boys For Life, is in theaters now. It is the first film in the franchise since 2003.