At the height of his powers in Hollywood in the early 2000s,Will Smithmade a change.
It would go on to earn over $371 million worldwide.
Tennant told Business Insider that creative battles behind the scenes defined his working relationship with Smith.
“I didn’t want cheap jokes, but he didn’t trust me,” Tennant recalled.
Reps for Smith did not respond to requests for comment from BI.
“I think I started crying.”
Andy Tennant:I was developing a movie, and I had just heard that Jennifer Aniston had passed.
I thought, I can’t get a movie made even after “Sweet Home.”
Read it tonight."
I read it, and the next day, I went to meet with Will.
That was the beginning of “Hitch.”
Were you curious why Will wanted to do a rom-com?
That was the reason why Will wanted to do it.
He wanted to break that barrier.
What was it like evolving the Hitch character alongside Will?
The original script was a date doctor.
I think that was the one line that we kept.
I think my main contribution to the early conversations with Will was about Hitch not being a misogynist.
That whole line about, “Hit it and quit it, that’s not me.”
But we had our difficulties.
It was a battle.
[Smith’s wife] Jada [Pinkett Smith] was a big help.
She kind of seconded some of my instincts.
There was a time during prep when I was pushing back.
A lot of crazy shit that was happening.
What is “crazy shit”?
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Crazy story ideas.
There was a draft that Will brought in that I was not a fan of.
Because I knew they were right on the edge of firing me before we even began shooting.
And to Will’s credit, we didn’t go with that draft.
I don’t think I was ever in anyone’s favor.
Did you wake up every day thinking this could be your last day on the movie?
This was all in prep.
I think there was a lot of fear doing a big, expensive romantic comedy with Will.
It was fraught with peril.
Will tried to back out three days before we started shooting.
He wanted to shut down and work on it some more.
Once we started filming, it was a bunch of good creative people doing the best they could.
There were some debates but there were things that turned out really funny.
You keep all the really fun stuff you have a good movie, but it was a wild ride.
That scene was written by me and one of the producers that day all day.
And the reason was because the scene on that street was originally just three or four lines.
We were then going to do a company move somewhere else.
That scene originally had Will and Kevin looking at the newspaper, “Tell me what this is?”
“Oh, that’s just a little me being me.”
“No, that’s a little you being something I never want to see again.”
But Will said, on the day we were shooting, “This is a great street.
We should be doing something here.”
So that starts at 6:30, 7 in the morning.
Now, he’s right, but it’s also, “Uh-oh, there goes the schedule.”
The chairman of Sony, Amy Pascal, was flying in to have dinner with us that night.
Now we’re off the rails and we have to come up with something.
So we messed with that for a bit, and then someone came up with the keys jingling.
Then Kevin was riffing on some stuff.
It was all just an idea.
And we didn’t have a location to shoot this.
We didn’t have permission.
So she was like, “Hi!”
And we were like, “Hi, can we shoot on your doorstep?”
And she was like, “Ah, yeah.”
Kevin James told him, “It’s really funny.
It’s going to be a good scene.”
And thank god for Kevin, because he got Will to shoot it.
That scene is five and a half pages long, written on that day.
It’s one of the best scenes in the movie.
We shot a five-and-a-half-page scene in three hours and then went to dinner with Amy Pascal.
I should have taken a Xanax before this interview.
So we did the date at Ellis Island, the Jet Ski, the whole thing.
Will didn’t want to do it because he said Black people didn’t come through Ellis Island.
I begged him to come out to Ellis Island so I could at least pitch it.
So that’s why that scene is in the movie.
The way Rick and I wrote it was as a romantic scene.
And Will was like, “No, just give me the life vest.”
I have watched that scene a thousand times.
I don’t understand how she was able to pause before going into the water.
Kevin James improvised all his moves during the dance sequence
How aboutHitch teaching Albert how to dance?
What do you remember from that?
That’s all Will.
This was when we were on the same page about stuff.
So the day we shot the scene, that’s all Kevin.
you could see Will holding the remote over his mouth, trying not to laugh.
He didn’t know what Kevin was going to do.
None of us did.
We couldn’t believe it.
The cherry on top of that sequence is theUsher song, “Yeah!”
Will is the only reason we got it.
The wedding ending was made up on the day
What do you recall from thewedding scene ending?
We knew we were going to do a wedding scene, but we didn’t have a scene.
We had a bunch of extras and nothing.
I was just out of ideas.
And then I came up with it.
I yelled out to the AD, “I need an 85-year-old woman!”
Then, the dancing was just letting everyone go loose.
We just turned the camera on and let them go.
Like Kevin sliding between Will’s legs and then doing the splits, that was all them.
We started playing Heavy D’s “Now That We’ve Found Love.”
The last thing we shot were theflashback scenes.
Will shaved his goatee; he loved it.
He wanted to look like Steve Urkel.
I think he felt the same way I did.
He thought this movie is a disaster.
We wrapped and it was depressing.
The movie ends and the audience has completely embraced the movie.
People were cheering when the movie ended.
Box it and ship it."
That was our first and last test screening.
We tested higher than any other movie they had at the time.
Was there ever talk of a sequel?
I just found out about it three months ago.
Hey, that’s Hollywood.
I don’t have anything against Will.
He hired me to make this movie.
It was not an easy job for anybody, but we went around the world with the movie.
Even the hard times he’d always say, “Wait until the junket.
We’re gonna go around the world with this” and we did, and it was great.
It was the most amazing trip I had ever been on.
And when it was over, my time with Will was over.
And I have never heard from him since.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
