I en annan värld hade vi fått se Will Smith som Neo i den banbrytande actionrullen The Matrix, men rollen gick ju som bekant till Keanu Reeves och och nu förklarar Will Smith i en Youtube-video varför han tackade nej till rollen och hur han reagerade till Waschowski-syskonens filmpitch:
"After we made Men in Black, the Wachowskis, they came in, and they had only done one movie, I think it was called 'Bound,' and they made a pitch for The Matrix. As it turns out, they're geniuses, but there's a fine line in a pitch meeting between a genius and what I experienced in the meeting."
"This is the actual pitch that they made for The Matrix. 'Dude, we're thinking like, imagine you're in a fight, then you jump, imagine if you could stop jumping in the middle of the jump.'"
Han avslöjar också att om han var aktuell för rollen, så ville man anställa Val Kilmer som karaktären Morpheus:
"Keanu was perfect. Laurence Fishburne was perfect. If I had done it, because I'm black, then Morpheus wouldn't have been black. They were looking at Val Kilmer. I was gonna be Neo and Val Kilmer was gonna be Morpheus, so I probably would have messed The Matrix up. I would have ruined it. So I did y'all a favor."
Kan du tänka dig Will Smith som Neo och Val Kilmer som Morpheus?
This ends now, Uncle Phil!