Popular actor Will Smith has a fair share of history of being protective over his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
Decades prior, actor Tommy Davidson claimed that he and Smith had a “run-in” due Davidson and Pinkett Smith’s kissing scene in the 1998 film Woo.
“He came into the trailer, and I was sitting down,” Davidson, 59, recalled on the Wednesday, October 11, episode of Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay” podcast of the incident. “He’s standing over me, and he’s like, ‘I don’t appreciate that, man. I don’t appreciate that.’ And I’m like, ‘What you talking about?’ I always know to play it off,” the comedian recalled.
The comedian continued: “I’m like, ‘What’s going on man? Tell me what’s happening.’ And since he was standing and I was sitting, I was a real nice fella. That’s about physics.”
Davidson said that while he didn’t know what was making Smith so angry, he wanted to get to the bottom of it. “Finally I just said, ‘This is a small place and people are here, we should talk about it, me and you, outside, ‘cause it looks like you need to get something off your chest,’” he explained. For her part, Pinkett Smith — who was also in the room — was adamant that they didn’t speak privately.
In fact, Davidson didn’t find out the reason behind Smith’s confrontation until more than 20 years later. Before referencing the incident in his 2020 memoir, Living in Color: What’s Funny About Me, Davidson had to get permission first. “I found out about literature that you can’t put something in a book about somebody unless they sign off,” he said.
It has been noted that Davidson sent the quotes from the book to a friend of Smith’s who not only approved the passages but explained that Smith had been upset about Davidson and Pinkett Smith’s kissing scene in Woo.
While the onscreen kiss was a planned part of the script, Davidson recalled producers asked that they perform the scene ahead of schedule, before the two actors had a chance to rehearse it. Davidson refused at first, but after producers told him that Pinkett Smith was OK with it, he agreed.
“When emotions is high, common sense is at an all-time low,” Davidson said of Smith’s reaction to the unplanned kiss.
