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Today, comedian Tommy Davidson’s memoir hit the shelves. If you saw Davidson’s episode of “Red Table Talk,” you know that he has an incredible story. From being abandoned at birth to being raised by a White family, to a drug addiction etc, he’s lived a fascinating life. And he’s sharing the stories from his time here on earth in the memoir Living in Color.
In one such anecdote, Davidson shared that he nearly got into a physical altercation with Will Smith on the set of the 1998 film Woo.
Davidson was working with Jada Pinkett Smith, who played his love interest in the film. He shared that he and Jada got along very well on set, having several meaningful conversations. But when it came to the movie, Davidson was not happy with the film’s original ending. The producers agreed.
Davidson, on a call with Jada and the producers, suggested that their characters dance at the end of the movie, while the credits roll. Everyone agreed with the new plan.
In another conversation with a producer, Davidson mentioned that his character should kiss Jada’s character. While he said it to one person, he didn’t mention it to Jada.
“I didn’t know this: You have to rehearse a kiss,” he writes. “You can’t just spring it on your costar … And I didn’t think it was all that big of a deal.”
But it was a thing. Davidson said that when he went in to kiss his costar, he immediately felt Jada flinch.
Shortly after the scene, Will Smith, who was engaged to Jada at the time and was on set, marched into Davidson’s trailer and said, “I didn’t appreciate that.”
Apparently, Davidson didn’t back down immediately and the energy got tense.
“Will went all gangsta on me, saying what I did was not cool,” Davidson says in the book. “There was a moment there when we might have come to blows. My reactive fight-or-flight instinct was triggered and I could have exploded.”
Just so happens that Jada followed Will into the trailer and was able to calm both men down.
There is a bit of history there. Jada Pinkett Smith shared that for her role in Jason’s Lyric she was not comfortable with the way the director Doug McHenry could possibly manipulate her image.
“I just didn’t trust Doug (McHenry, the director) and the vision of what he wanted to do. He could exploit an image of what people might think of me, but I wasn’t going to allow him to do that to me.”
She said that she preferred not to work with him again. There are rumors that she used a body double during the movie’s notorious sex scene. Although ultimately, Pinkett-Smith was happy with the final cut of the film.
If you saw Davidson’s episode on “Red Table Talk,” you know that Davidson and Jada still maintain a friendship. The two also co-starred in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled. And the comedian credits Jada’s mother, Adrienne Banfield-Jones, a recovering addict, with helping him on his own sobriety journey.
Tommy Davidson’s memoir, Living in Color: What’s Funny About Me is available in bookstores now.
