Will Smith and the ‘P’ word

The "P" word tumbled out of Will Smith’s mouth at exactly 11:45 in the morning of last Sunday, June 29, at Room 1701 (converted into a TV studio) of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in downtown Miami during the round of TV interviews for Bad Boys 2 where Smith and Martin Lawrence reprise their roles as narcotics detectives tasked to stem the flood of designer drug Ecstasy into Miami.

It was my third face-to-face interview with Smith in four years. The first was in l999 for Wild, Wild West (with Salma Hayek as his leading lady), held at a function room of the star-friendly Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. It was also a fine Sunday morning when the bathroom-fresh Smith, wearing a pair of beige slacks and white sando, breezed into the room wearing a wide smile, perking up everybody (most of us were fighting off jet lag) with a booming "Hey, how’s everybody!?!"

He sat right next to me and throughout the 30-minute round-table interview, we literally rubbed elbows with each other. It was a fun interview and we (80-plus entertainment journalists from around the world and other parts of the US) had a good time.

I next met Smith in Seoul mid-June last year for the press junket of Men In Black 2 (MIBII). He was with co-star Tommy Lee Jones who was much too stern and serious compared to the free-wheeling Smith who gave you the impression that all’s right with the world – why worry?

As soon as I sat before him at the hotel-room-turned-TV-studio, I gave him a copy of The STAR which carried my Conversation (If There’s A Will, There’s a Smith) done in Beverly Hills. He went over it and smiled, mumbling a "thank you." Of course, he didn’t remember me from our first encounter. Hollywood stars cross paths with hundreds of faces every day and 99 percent of them are mere statistics to them. But Smith was nice, anyway.

A few minutes before that TV interview, I tried to catch his attention by bumping his arm at the buffet table where he was getting a cup of coffee and I my cup of Lipton Tea. You guessed it: I missed my target. Smith is a towering six-footer and I barely 5’3" so I hit his elbow and he nearly spilled his coffee. "Sorry," he apologized and, smiling, turned to join Tommy Lee Jones and company.

Oh, yes, back to the "P" word...

Halfway through my allotted seven-minute TV interview (in Miami), I reminded Smith that when he bared his chest during a chase scene in Bad Boys 1 (also directed by Michael Bay of Pearl Harbor and Armageddon fame) he was instantly declared a "sex symbol." Yes, he confessed, he was flattered. And then it happened.

I asked him which part of his body he considered sexy and, without batting an eyelash, he answered, "My p_ _ _s!" I thought I misheard him, so he said it again, "My p_ _ _s!" Very casually and with malice toward none.

Soon, he was laughing and I was laughing and everybody in the room was laughing. I reminded him that when I asked him the same question in Seoul last year, he gave a different answer (was it "my eyes?"). He said, "You’re asking me now and I’m giving you my answer. My p_ _ _s!" Then he looked at the TV cameras and dared me, "Use it!!" With a big laugh, of course, as if he didn’t mean it. Or did he? (Note: The interview will be shown on ABS-CBN’s The Buzz on July 20 and I don’t know how they’ll handle it. Just watch for it, huh?)

As usual, I gave Smith a copy of The STAR which carried my Conversation (Will Power) with him in Seoul prior to our interview and, again, he smiled and actually called me "Sir" as he thanked me.

That same afternoon when I and the other journalists sat down with him for the round-table interview, Smith flashed his signature "bad boy" smile and said, "Don’t be scared, sir! It was just a joke."

The "P" word, that is.

Was it really just a joke? Find out for yourselves when that Bad Boys 2 interview is shown on The Buzz.

Reader’s reaction

A few issues ago, Funfare called Bayani Agbayani’s attention to a complaint against his below-the-belt jokes on the ABS-CBN sitcom Ok, Fine, Whatever! Bayani took the criticism with a positive attitude, promising to, well, "tone down" a bit.

Here’s another letter from a Funfare reader, Mellude Francisco, who has his own case against another show, GMA’s NUTS Entertainment:

I just want to react to the kind of entertainment the Nuts Entertainment is showing on national television nowadays. I am not a fan of this tv show; I just happened to watch a few parts last June 25.

There was this scene where they guested two sets of veteran basketball players to play a kind of game that I witnessed with dismay. This is how it went: There was one player beside a table full of eggs. He needed to throw the egg one by one for the second player to catch until the last player of the team. The person who caught the egg must crack the shell of the egg with his bare hands and pour its contents to the plastic cup onto the face of a non-player (non-showbiz talent or more commonly known as "extra") lying on the floor. One talent for each team. The main goal of this disgusting game was to fill the plastic cup, using the eggs which was put onto the face of the poor talent as a patungan, not minding even if it spilled directly on the face.

What really saddened me was the fact that all the people on the set were laughing tremendously and seemed to be having "fun" with this mortifying ‘game." I don't know who were the writers of this segment. All of us in the house felt pity for the poor talents. We were not entertained at all.

We don't need this kind of comic act or whatever they might want to call this. "Fun" or "game" is not even the word. I am sure that these people (talents) were paid for this act but the impact it made was definitely degrading not only to them but for the people who wrote and executed the act.

There was also this other scene hosted by Carmina Villarroel and Gelli de Belen outside the studio. I believe this segment was for televiewers who requested for whatever they wanted the artists to do. The challenge was to pound the watermelons in the shortest period of time as requested by a televiewer. Brad Turvey hit the fruits which were placed in the street while a number of children witnessed the challenge.

So there it went... He pounced on the fruits in no time. But after the demonstration, the slashed fruits were attacked by the children.

I hope that not many children watched the episode because this was not how food or fruits should be treated! There are many people starving and I don’t know how the farmers would react if and when they watched it.

And that person who requested the challenge should think of a sensible thing to do. Food should not be a material to showcase any talent or challenge especially if it does not go directly to the mouth.

What did we get from the challenge? Nothing. Many people will not be intrigued or get curious as to how many seconds it took to smash the watermelon.

I am sure that there are several materials that they could use to showcase talent, new comic acts, without irritating televiewers.

You know Ricky, I don't usually comment on or react to TV shows. But this one was outright disgusting; a not so nice (Nuts) entertainment because it left us exasperated.

I hope that the GMA 7 Management will do something about this.

(E-mail reactions at [email protected])