I Am Legend comes to Showcase on Saturday, March 6 at 10pm ET/PT
Robert Neville (Will Smith) is a brilliant scientist, but even he could not contain the terrible virus that was unstoppable, incurable, and man-made that befell society. Somehow immune, Neville is now the last human survivor in what is left of New York City and maybe the world. For three years, Neville has faithfully sent out daily radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out there. But he is not alone. Mutant victims of the plague — The Infected — lurk in the shadows, watching Neville’s every move and waiting for him to make a fatal mistake. Perhaps mankind’s last, best hope, Neville is driven by only one remaining mission: to find a way to reverse the effects of the virus using his own immune blood. But he knows he is outnumbered… and quickly running out of time.
I Am Legend is a cautionary warning about our misuse of technology and a compelling, action-packed tale of undying hope and true heroism. Here, Will Smith discusses his experience with making the film.
What would you do in a real life disaster? Have you ever had to play the hero in the real world?
That is always a tough question. That is what is interesting about playing a character like this. You get to explore and wonder how you would react. For me, Ali was the greatest time of asking myself that question. When Ali didn’t step forward because they wouldn’t call him Muhammad Ali, and he knew he was going to jail, he knew what the situation was going to be, but still he couldn’t step forward. I just remember thinking, in that moment, ‘What would I do?’ I just don’t know if I would be enough man to give up everything I have right now, the way Ali did, for that principle. When I look at my Legend character, Robert Neville, I think, ‘What was there to live for? What was there to hope for? To wake up everyday and try to restore something that is good and gone?’ I like to believe that I would put my chest up and stand forward, just march on and continue to fight for the future of humanity. I would probably find a bridge and say 'I’m coming to join you, Elizabeth.' [laughs] It’s a tough question, and I guess the answer is, ‘I don’t know.’ I don’t think so. You want to be tested to know what you would do, but you really don’t want to be tested. That is sort of the space that I have lived in with quite a few of the roles I have played.
You have had a passion for I Am Legend ever since you were first going to do it with director Michael Bay. That was several directors ago. Why has the role of Dr. Robert Neville stayed with you for the past twelve or thirteen years?
Robert Neville has stayed with me for a long time. I think with movies I am really connecting to the Joseph Campbell idea of the collective unconscious. There are things that we all dream, there are things that each one of us has thought, that connect to life, death, and sex. There are things that are beyond language. To me, this is one of those concepts. Times that you have been on the freeway many times and wished that everybody were dead. [laughs] There have been times where things have gone and you just wish you were by yourself. You don’t need any of these assholes. You just want to be by yourself. That coupled with, that separation from people, being ripped away from people, being separated, connected with the dark and unknown of the dark. It’s how we would fair against whatever is in that unknown is a really primal idea. I couldn’t always articulate it like that but I’ve loved this concept. It connects to ideas that a four year old can understand.
How did you mentally prepare for the isolation aspect of this film?
That aspect -- that was the terrifying part of even taking on this film. There’s probably 80 pages of just me and a dog. There’s good times I’ve had on camera before and people have enjoyed me in a movie theatre but that might be a little too much Will for anybody. I looked at it and worked with Akiva Goldsman, the writer of the script. We studied POWs, prisoners of war, and we found out a guy who had been in isolation, in a prison, and just really found the things and the people that could really create the texture of what that truly means, to be by yourself -- and the one thing that was across the board is schedule. And a guy Geronimo Degiga, he said that you would schedule things like cleaning your nails. And that you would have two hours that you would clean your nails, and that was the only way to maintain sanity, is that you had to have a regimen; you had to have a schedule; you had to do things that you trained your mind that had to be done this day during this time. That was the basis of how we tried to create the scheduling and then it’s the idea of the internal monologue where you have no stimulus -- no-one's talking to you; no-one's doing anything; you have no external stimulus -- you lose the stimulus response concept with your thoughts and feelings. A guy told us that you forget the names of simple things. He said he remembers sitting in his cell one time and for about four hours, he was trying to remember what these things are called [says waggling his fingers] and he couldn’t remember what they were called. And he said. ‘Oh damn! Fingers!’ And he said that’s what happens when you don’t have the stimulus and response -- your mind really loses basic simple concepts. So we really worked in that area with the internal monologue where you have to hold a conversation with yourself. It’s a weird thing on camera. That was way too much time for one question! That was a Tommy Lee Jones right there.
Are you a Bob Marley fan like your character. Dr. Neville?
I love, love, love Bob Marley. Its funny because the script was done and we’d already begun shooting, and I was looking for things for my character, and that Bob Marley Legend album actually is my favorite album so it just connected with me that concept of Bob Marley having the virologist sort of idea of trying to cure hate with music. And that idea just exploded in my mind about two weeks into production -- it just fit perfectly that idea of lighting up the darkness. It was one of those perfect opportunities when something had already lived inside of you fits perfectly with a character and a situation. That was my little treat.
Was it comforting for you to know that the author of I Am Legend, Richard Matheson, considered you perfect for the role of Robert Neville?
That’s extremely helpful. With The Pursuit of Happyness and also with Ali -- when you do something that is someone’s baby, essentially, it is so important that that person or people feel that you’ve done justice. And it was important to me that Mr. Matheson felt that I could do it and he was on board for it; and Ali was planning on doing it and, at the end of the day, that he felt like we had done a service to his vision. And, to me, when he signed off, it was all good.
The gray hair you sport in I Am Legend, was that a special effect or the real Will Smith?
That was a special effect. We had the worlds best gray hair people come in from from Europe. It’s not mine. I swear! [laughs] It is European Company that does it, they are, GHI, or Grey Hair International and they just do that, because solid (black) is normally the color. (laughs, and begins to unzip pants) I can prove it! I can prove it! [laughs]
What was the experience of shooting in New York City like when the production shut down several blocks and the city seemed empty?
Shooting in New York, especially something on this level, is difficult. I would say that percentage wise it’s the most amounts of middle fingers I’ve ever received in my career. I was like, ‘I’m used to people liking me, when I come to town, it’s fun, so I thought ‘Middle fingers?’ I was starting to think ‘f-you’ was my name. [laughs] We shut down six blocks of Fifth avenue on a Monday morning. That was probably poor logistics, which was poor planning. You realize that you have never actually seen an empty shot of New York. When we were doing it, it’s chilling to walk down the middle of Fifth Avenue. There is never an opportunity to walk down the middle of Fifth Avenue. At two o’clock in the morning on Sunday you can’t walk down the middle of Fifth Avenue. What happened is that it just created such a creepy energy. There are iconic buildings, there is a shot in the movie with the UN, there is Broadway, and it puts such an eerie, icky, kind of feeling on the movie when you see those shots. Logistically, it was a nightmare, but it absolutely created something that you can’t do with green screen, and you can’t do shooting another city instead of New York.
If you really were the last man on earth, what comfort items would you take with you?
A pistol! Because I’m out of here! Go to the nearest bridge! That was another thing with this film that I realized, that its such a primal, childlike idea: 'I just wish everybody was gone! I wish I was by myself!' No you don’t! As much as people get on your nerves on the freeway; as much as people irritate you through your daily life -- if you took everyone away, and you had it exactly the way that you wanted it, it would be the most miserable existence that you could experience. I walked down the middle of Fifth Avenue, we had cleared out for six blocks, and as cool as that is, its only cool because when we yell ‘Cut‘, there’s 10,000 people in the other side. Human connection and the groups that we form, and the being a part of something that moves and changes the world, its such a basic human simple idea -- its like there would be absolutely no pleasure for me at all in experiencing that amount of loneliness and solitude.
What about the loneliness of your character, Robert Neville, and the madness he begins to feel? Basically, you are acting for the first half of the movie by yourself.
It was such a wonderful exploration of myself. What happens is that you get in a situation where you don’t have people to create the stimulus for you to respond to. What happens is that you start creating the stimulus and the response. There is a connection with yourself, where your mind starts to drift to in those types of situations, that you learn about your self things you would never even imagination. In order to prepare for that we sat with former POWs and we sat with people who had been in solitary confinement. That was the framework for creating the idea. They said, ‘The first thing is a schedule. You will not survive in solitary if you don’t schedule everything.’ We talked to Geronimo Ji-Jaga, formerly Geronimo Pratt of the Black Panthers, and he was in solitary for over three months. He said that you plan things like cleaning your nails. You will take two hours, which you have to because it’s on the schedule, which you have to just clean your nails. He said that he spent about six weeks and he trained roaches to bring him food. I’m sitting there like, ‘Oh my God.’ The idea of where your mind goes to defend itself. Either he really did train the roaches, which is huge, or his mind needed that to survive. Either way, you put that on camera and it’s genius. For me, that was the thing, to be able to get into the mental space where whatever the truth was for Robert Neville didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered is what he saw and what he believed. How many people picked up on the mannequin shot at the end with the little turn of the head? You saw that? There are probably like six or seven of those in the movie. It was such a great exploration of what happens to the human mind that is trying to defend itself. For me, I’m a better actor for having had to create both sides of the scene, with no dialogue.
How attached did you get to Samantha, Neville's dog/partner in the film?
Oh, Abbey is the dog’s real name. When I was probably nine years old, I had a dog Trixie. It was a white golden retriever that got hit by a car. So now I refuse, I have had no animals. But I said, ‘Jada, you can have the dogs you want, the kids can have the dogs they want, but I’m not putting myself emotionally connected to a dog anymore.’ Then, they brought that damn Abbey on the set. You say a ‘smart’ dog. It got to the point with Abbey that she would be playing, playing, playing, and she would hear ‘Rolling!’ so she would run over to her mark and get ready. I was like ‘What in the hell?’ It’s like she would know when I wasn’t doing my lines right. If I would get lost in the scene she would just go silent you know? [laughs] It was the first time I had allowed myself to connect and be fond of a dog, since that experience, So I said to Abbey’s owner, ‘Please, Abbey has to live with me. Please.’ He was like, ‘Well, this is how I make my living, man.’ I was like,‘Tell me what you need. Tell me what you need. A house in the hills?’ But she was smart, just fun, and warm. I experienced the pain again, because he said ‘I’ll bring her over every weekend Will, but she has to work.’ It was painful. She is great. I used to watch Lassie and animals really can be smarter than other animals. She is way on another plain of connecting to what your energy is, what your feelings are, and protective. It’s beautiful.
Which one of your kids demanded more money, Jaden or Willow? Are they planning to make acting their career?
We say when we look at Jaden and Willow, that Jaden is Johnny Depp. He just wants to do good work, he doesn’t care what money he gets. He doesn’t care if people see it or don’t see it. He loves acting, he just wants to make good movies. Willow is Paris Hilton. [laughs] Willow wants to be on TV. [laughs] We are managing both of those in our household.
Is your oldest son, Trey, ready for his shot at the big screen?
Not at all. He has no interest in it at all. He could care less about acting and doing movies. Football is his thing. He loves football.
When the holidays come around, do your kids expected Lamborghinis under the Christmas tree? How do you keep them grounded, especially now that they are doing movies themselves?
It’s funny, it’s really simple. Jaden and Trey are very simple. Willow just wants clothes. She loves it, she’s dressed herself since she was about four years old. She is very specific about her style. She is very specific about how she wants to look, how she wants to present, the sizes and all that. Willow is like a...
Would you say she’s like a shop-a-holic?
It’s funny, she doesn’t like shopping. She doesn’t like going out and shopping. She wants you to think about her and she loves the idea that she gets things by surprise. Christmas really isn’t big for her. If she knows its coming it’s not as big of a deal. Jaden just wants his family around. Anything that causes the whole family to be together, that is what he wants.
Is there another country you would like to take your family to and possibly live in?
Not to live. To me, Los Angeles and Miami, I just can’t imagine topping those places for where I would love to live. I have a theory that cities and towns have, essentially, emotional patterns. There are cities that each and every one of us could live in, that match our emotional pattern, that we would just be better people if we lived in this place. I think that my emotional pattern is like the weather patterns of Los Angeles and Miami. It’ warm all the time, it rains a little bit, but when it does its fun because it cools it off. The traffic might get a little bad but it’s not like being in four inches of snow in traffic. Jada needs four seasons. She can’t function if it’s warm all the time, it’s light and fun all the time, and she needs the hibernation. She needs the time where nothing is moving, it’s quiet, you aren’t hearing cars and horns, because they are muffled by the wonderful snow. If I never, ever, see snow again for the rest of my life, that’s great.
How significant is that the last man alive is African American in I Am Legend?
First and last, baby. [laughs] It’s funny, it’s almost a metaphysical idea for me. I rarely think about that until someone brings it up. Then I say ‘Oh, wow. That never actually crossed my mind in that way.’ I kind of feel like, for me at least, the acknowledgement of those kinds of ideas put a weird boundary on my thoughts. I can’t allow myself to be a part of it because it sort of makes me think smaller, if that makes any sense. I said all that to say that I’ve never really thought about the significance of that with the film.
Do you think that there is racism inherent in the film industry? Is that why we don’t see more mainstream black movies?
It’s interesting. But, I don’t like the word racism, because there are so many connotations that go with it. Look, if you put ten black artists in a room and we sit down and come up with something, it will be about black people. It’s not racism with studios, because the majority of the creative people there are of a certain background, but it’s more our responsibility to be able to display and show how it could different, how to make a film like Set It Off, Bad Boys or The Secret Life of Bees attractive to a mass movie-going audience. We have to display how that will work. We can’t expect people to write or produce our stories unless we do it.
You dropped twenty pounds for I Am Legend. How much training did you have to do?
For me, what we determined from our research, is that eating becomes just something that you do just because you have to -- its like there’s no pleasure; there’s no real desire to eat; you just know that your brain’s not going to function if you don’t. For me, I have a much easier time losing weight than I do putting weight on. Ali was fifty times harder, trying to put weight on than it was for me drop weight for this. You run thirty miles a week -- you get up and run five miles six days a week, your body will look like whatever you want it to look like.
Did you keep it up?
There are wonderful elements of being in shape that keep a marriage going, so its important to me to stay in good shape and in good condition - you know, you marry a little firecracker, you’ve gotta stay in shape.