Will Smith Once Shared He’d Only Play a Villain Under 1 Condition
Will Smith has mostly played good guys or heroes in the many films that he’s led. But the megastar has very rarely portrayed a villain, which he once shared was an intentional decision on his part.
Will Smith’s villains needed to have a message
Smith’s movie success was carefully crafted in the beginning. While enjoying a successful run on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Smith already had a goal in mind in becoming a top movie star. To do this, he and his manager studied the top 10 grossing movies of all time back then.
“We realized that 10 out of 10 had special effects. Nine out of 10 had special effects with creatures. Eight out of 10 had special effects with creatures and a love story,” Smith once told Time.
But after Smith achieved the success he wanted, he began wanting to focus less on box-office hits and more on variety.
“The persona I created had become too big for the stories I want to tell. I had started to overshadow the characters I play. People see me on screen and go, ‘Oh, look, it’s Will Smith,’” Smith once told The Morning Call.
This led to Smith taking a bit more risk in his career by doing smaller films like Legend of Bagger Vance. And although the actor has continued playing a wide range of roles, he’s very seldom stepped into the shoes of a villain. Smith confided he’d mostly rather convey positivity in his films.
“I enjoy inspiring good feelings, that is fun for me. Comedy I would say is my most fun. How people react to Hitch and The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, there is nothing that matches that,” he once told Empire (via Female First).
Still, he didn’t completely rule out playing a villain.
“I’m sure there is a bad guy at some point that has the right message. Scarface had the right message about power and drugs and it showed you exactly where that mess was going to end up,” he said.
Will Smith felt like he enjoyed an insane group of super actor villains in ‘Suicide Squad’
Smith would dabble with the role of a supervillain by playing the DC character Deadshot in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. Although primarily a villain, Smith would join a team of other villains to save the world. So the role could be seen more as an anti-hero as well. Smith became fascinated with the part when he realized what he could potentially do with it.
“It’s a character that hasn’t really been explored in cinema,” Smith once told Coming Soon. “I get to design it and be a part of creating the first round of Deadshot in the history of cinema…It’s a really great opportunity to work with a really great ensemble. It was perfectly cast. It’s an insane group of super actor villains.”
He’d also wanted to work with Ayer himself, and Suicide Squad gave him the opportunity to do so. However, the actor had some reservations about getting into the Deadshot character.
“I couldn’t find a model to understand what would make someone comfortable killing another person for money,” he said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “David walked me through that. He found a book for me [The Anatomy of Motive by John Douglas], and I worked through getting into the mind of serial killers. Once I accepted the [notion the author puts forth] that it feels good, that really exploded the idea in my mind of Deadshot.”
Will Smith did his only true villain role as a favor
Other than Deadshot, Smith briefly portrayed another villain when he played the Devil in the 2014 movie Winter’s Tale. The Oscar-winner’s role amounted to a brief cameo, and was done at the request of the film’s director Akiva Goldsman.
“The truth is, we didn’t have a very large budget, so I asked everyone who I’d every worked with if they would think about doing it. And pretty much every person onscreen worked for scale or just about scale,” Goldsman told Variety.
Goldsman knew Smith from their collaboration on I, Robot, and thought Smith would make an interesting choice as Lucifer.
“I wanted the most charming man in the world to play the Devil,” Goldsman said. “And he’s the most charming man in the world.”
