Will Smith Admits He Went "Too Far" While Filming "Emancipation"

Source: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

Kevin Hart returned for more wine-sipping and tea-spilling on the season finale of Hart To Heart  featuring an eyebrow-raising revelation from an honest and open Will Smith.

At one point in the conversation, Smith admitted that he went “too far’ while filming graphic slavery epic Emancipation that premiered on AppleTV+ last December.

“Just bringing it up I start to get teary,” he said. “I wanted to feel the degradation of slavery and I went too far and, you know, the level of human brutality–what we will do to each other and, you know, I had the metal chains on my neck and we were working and I was like, ‘I want the real weight, I want the real chains, all of that’ so they got old chains and they put it on my neck and they were fitting it for size and I’m standing there and the prop master went to put the key in and the key didn’t work… panic,” he continued.

And I was like, ‘oh no! Will relax,’ and I’m standing there and they’re running around and they couldn’t get me out of it. I’m standing there in those chains, dude, right on that hyperventilating edge and, ‘I’m OK, I’m OK,’ and they found it and they got it out and I was like, you know, Peter was the character and nobody was running around to get him out and I just kept falling deeper and deeper into that understanding…”

Hart, who put together an impressive Season 3 run with A-list guests including Dr. Dre, Issa Rae, and Will Ferrell, also sat down with his BFF Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson who explained what happened with polarizing superhero film Black Adam.

“Black Adam got caught in a vortex of new leadership,” said Johnson when asked why the blockbuster that grossed nearly $400 million worldwide didn’t get a sequel. “It was so many changes in leadership. Anytime you have a company, a publicly traded company, and you have all those changes in leadership, you have people coming in who, creatively and fiscally, are going to make decisions that you may not agree with. It was like new ownership coming in and buying an NFL team and going, ‘Not my coach, not my quarterback.’ It doesn’t matter how many times you won the Super Bowl or how many rings you got; you’re going with somebody else.”

That will always be one of the biggest mysteries,” he continued. “You have the biggest opening of your career. Sure, no China, which could’ve been maybe $100 or $200 million more dollars. You have a superhero, and you want to grow out the franchise. You bring back Superman and Henry Cavill, which the world went crazy. And we created a diverse superhero portfolio, where we have just men and women of color in Black Adam.”

Hart To Heart is now streaming exclusively on Peacock.