Will Smith Improvised Bad Boys: Ride or Die Slap Scene

Directors Adil & Bilall recently opened up about the Bad Boys: Ride or Die slap scene and revealed how it actually came from Will Smith. The scene, which occurs toward the end of the film, sees Martin Lawrence’s Marcus Burnett slap Will’s “Mike” Lowery.

Speaking to Variety on their recently released film,

The moment is a sort of callback to Smith’s now-infamous Oscar slap, but Adil & Bilall also said he was the main proponent for it happening.

What did the directors say about the Bad Boys: Ride or Die slap scene?

“Will is coming with this idea; he made this movie really personal,” Bilall Fallah told Variety. “Will was really engaged from the first second that we started pre-production until the last day of the edit. When we were shooting that moment, the sun was going down and we were like, ‘We didn’t finish the scene,’ so that was really almost a freestyle moment.”

Fallah went on to mention that the scene itself was never scripted and “not on the page,” but was instead thought up “in the moment,” with Adil El Arbi mentioning that it came from the directors pushing Martin to do more.

“That was on the spot. We just said, like, ‘Yeah, Martin, just go ahead. More, more,’” said El Arbi.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die is once again being directed by Bad Boys for Life filmmaking duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah from a screenplay written by Chris Bremmer. Joining Smith and Lawrence in the new movie are returning cast members Joe Pantoliano, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Paola Nunez, John Salley, Jacob Scipio and DJ Khaled.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die is out now in theaters.