Here's What James Avery Secretly Whispered To Will Smith During 'Fresh Princes' Most Emotional Sc
Every true Fresh Prince of Bel-Air fan knows the most emotional scene in the entire series. It came in the series’ fourth season and 24th episode called “Papa’s Got A Brand New Excuse”, and it’s an amazing example of Will Smith’s acting ability. It was pure raw emotion involving Will Smith and his on-screen uncle, James Avery. And while Smith gets all the credit for the scene, as Uncle Phil remains mainly silent through the stretch of emotional speech, Smith has given all the credit to Avery for helping him get through that moment.
In the final moments, Avery and Smith hug each other as the camera pans to the statue Will was going to give his dad. During that emotional moment, Avery had a comment for the young star at the time.
“‘That’s ****ing acting right there’,” Will Smith says in an interview about what Avery said to him while they embraced.
It’s the perfect ending to a difficult day to shoot what was the most emotional scene in the series, and an iconic one for television. How they got to that point is an amazing story.
Acted Avery In The Scene
Will Smith really wanted this scene to come off perfectly, but the problem was he was acting the scene, instead of living the scene. And acting wasn’t going to capture that moment at all. The scene was being done in front of a live studio audience, so it had to be perfect in order for the crowd to feel it and hopefully not applaud the performance, but be captured by it.
"So we're doing that scene and I'm having a hard time," Smith explains. "'Cause we were rehearsing and everything so, I'm doing it, I'm messing up the lines 'cause I want it so bad and I'm in front of the audience and I'm doing it and I'm furious and he holds on to me and he says, 'Hey, relax. Relax. It's already in there,” said Smith.
The next thing he said to him change the entire direction of the scene, as Avery had the smarts to realize that Smith needed to aim his emotion at someone, and not just pretend to aim it at someone.
“You know what it is...Look at me. Use me. Don't act around me. Act with me.',” Smith Said. “So he's talking me through it and everything. I get it together. So I do the scene and then he hugs me at the end.”
That’s when he whispered into Smith’s ear about acting, and it changed the momentum of the show, as Smith went from being a boy in the seasons prior, to finally becoming a man. It was a defining moment for his character, and for the show, and it’s one of the reasons the series was brought back for two more seasons after that.
Smith Aimed For Avery’s Approval
James Avery passed away in 2013 at the age of 68 from complications from open-heart surgery. It hit everyone hard when Avery died, as Smith looked up to him in a lot of ways. Smith said in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, when he died, "Some of my greatest lessons in acting, living, and being a respectable human being came through James Avery. Every young man needs an Uncle Phil. Rest in peace."
Smith has said that he has looked up to Avery, especially when they worked together on the show, despite Smith’s character playing a lot of jokes on his overweight Uncle, the two actors show a lot of respect for each other, and Smith was always looking for his approval. And that reflected even more in the scene they did together.
“It makes me teary right now because it was like I was using…I was using him,” said Smith. “I wanted him to want me. I wanted him to approve of me. So actually in that scene with him I was transferring that energy onto James Avery.”
Urban Legends Around The Scene
There was a wide rumor going around that Will Smith ad-libbed the entire speech and that his character was supposed to brush it off as it was no big deal. Instead, Smith went into the emotional speech, because his father wasn’t active in his life and he was pushing some of that pain out in the scene.
But the truth is, his father was very involved in his life, and Will didn’t just go off-script. The emotional speech to Avery was scripted and rehearsed over and over to try and get it right. And apparently, Smith did the scene for the cameras in one take, which is hard to do, but it would be hard to do that kind of reaction over and over again.
“Before this scene, Will Smith disappeared,” said a Reddit user in an interview with The Sun who was at the taping. “He showed up, did this scene in one take, then disappeared again. You might notice his hat coming off. Usually, the director would retake the scene, but really, nothing could replace this moment. People were crying for a long time when it was over, doing their best not to make noise before the director said ‘cut.’”
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