No One Went Hungry on Gemini Man Sets, Thanks to Will Smith: Wong

Benedict Wong who plays Will Smith’s friend in Ang Lee’s Gemini Man says that he was bowled over by Will Smith’s generosity. He said that Smith made sure no one was ever hungry on sets no matter where they were shooting. While speaking to The Quint he tells us how incredible it was working with Ang Lee.

Three things about Will Smith that we don’t know?

Well, his incredible generosity, in terms of, you know, why I felt that no one went hungry. There were food trucks aplenty and parties in every single destination wherever we were. And yeah, I think that was it. You know, I think he was everything that you’d probably expect and more so as well.

How was it to work with Ang Lee?

I mean Ang is incredible. I mean like the sort of, the plethora of all his films, the variety of them. And now for him to sort of enter into this sort of action genre, you know, working with the great Jerry Bruckheimer and the other great Will Smith. He’s like the contemplative, quiet conductor orchestrating this huge symphony. And he has developed these amazing cameras shooting 120 frames per second. We’re shooting in Savannah, Georgia, Cartagena, Colombia, Budapest. And, you know, I feel the audience member, when they go to the IMAX, the Dolby surround sound. It’s the experience, it’s the immersive experience about this.

What was your reaction like when you read the script and you were told that the film would be shot like this?

Yeah, I mean this, I mean the journey of this film, it just feels quite relentless, you know, and it moves at a pace. Obviously we’ve not used these cameras before and working alongside, you know, I have done stuff while in ‘Avengers’ where we’ve been used to people in the mocap (motion capture) look, so I was used to that. So for example, we would be shooting and in Glennville in a barn. We would shoot the scene where Will would be shooting opposite Victor - he’s the young Will double. We would be shooting that scene and then a month later, we would be in Budapest. We would be marking out in a studio with the Weta team looking at the footage that we shot and then replicating that as well and that was the process of it.

Editor: Ashish Maccune