Since launching his entertainment career in the late Eighties, Will Smith has recorded multi-platinum CDs, starred on a hit TV series, become one of Hollywood's most coveted leading men and been nominated for an Academy Award (for Ali). Recently, he's added behind-the-scenes work to his bag of tricks, serving as executive producer, along with his wife, Jada, on All of Us, a UPN television sitcom.
Will's film credits include the Bad Boys and Men in Black franchises, I, Robot and The Legend of Bagger Vance, which earned him one of his 7 NAACP Image Award nominations. In Hitch, his latest picture, he plays Alex Hitchens, New York's most successful date doctor. For a fee, Hitch will help any loser land the woman of his dreams.
KW: Tell me about your character Hitch.
WS: "Alex Hitchens is New York's premier, undercover date doctor. He's a guy who has studied relationships and has studied femininity to the point that he can guarantee that if you are in love with a woman and you do exactly what he says, that she'll be in love with you in three dates."
KW: This is a buddy flick where you're advising Albert, an awkward accountant . What is that relationship with Albert like?
WS: "Albert has so committed to his heart and so committed to the concept of love that he's willing to endure whatever he has to endure, except living without attempting to find his love. And Hitch re-discovers through Albert the bravery and the ability to be able to take your shot at paradise, to be able to take your shot at Nirvana, no matter what."
KW: How was it working with Kevin James [of CBS' The King of Queens], who plays Albert?
WS: Kevin James? Our interaction on-screen, and really off-screen, the comedic relationship is a lot like me and Martin Lawrence, in that Martin is so funny and so powerful that I can just relax in the scene. And I sort of pick up the scraps that are left in the scene. It's sort of the same thing with Kevin. He's so fiery and so powerful and so funny that we sort of engineered a comedy map of the scene around that energy."
KW: Is Kevin as bad a dancer as he pretends to be in the picture?
WS: "All of his dance moves are so wonderfully undesirable. There's a real passion in his dancing that shouldn't be there. But he really enjoys it. And in his mind, he's really giving it up, which is, I guess, all that really counts. But the lip biting and the pelvic thrusts are, I think, my least favorite of his moves."
KW: How did you craft your character?
WS: "The beauty of what Andy [director Andy Tennant] and I were able to create is the contrast of sensibilities. Our backgrounds are very different and what we were able to create is a completely well-rounded character that I would call the number one answer. So, any joke for Hitch that I think is hilarious and Andy thinks is hilarious is the number one answer. Really, it just covers a huge spectrum in between those zones."
KW: Weren't you working with a script, or mostly ad-libbing?
WS: "The idea was on the page, and Andy would have the idea and the structure of what the scene needed to be. We had words, but he was trying to find, he would always call it, 'What's the music?' He was trying to find the music of the comedy. So, he would work on people playing different instruments and work the scene trying to find the orchestration and the music of how the scene is supposed to play out."