Will Smith wanted to go ‘full Bollywood’ in Aladdin role

Will Smith urged Guy Ritchie to go fully embrace Bollywood style for his live action remake of Disney’s 1992 classic Aladdin.
The 50-year-old, who plays Genie in the movie, admitted to reporters at a red carpet event for the film in Tokyo, Japan that he took inspiration from the genre while filming scenes for the film.
“I was trying to do my best Bollywood version in this movie,” he reflected. “There is a Prince Ali sequence in the film, and I kept telling Guy Ritchie ‘You got to go full Bollywood. You have to give them full Bollywood flavour.’”
Will went on to share that he is keen to branch out further into the genre, and called for Bollywood executives to collaborate with him on upcoming projects.
“I have been visiting India, meeting and hanging out,” the The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star said. “They need to present me something, bring me something. I don’t know what do we want to do – but we should start, we should produce it to together.”
Earlier this year (19), the Independence Day star travelled to India to learn choreography for a cameo appearance in Bollywood movie Student of the Year 2, as part of his Facebook Watch show, Will Smith’s Bucket List.
While the rapper described the experience as “spectacular”, he also gushed over the country’s “beautiful culture” and shared his passion for the movie genre.
“India is just a beautiful culture. The colours, the music, the intersection of religion and cinema and just everything about this culture speaks to my personality,” Will said. “India has always had this otherworldly pull on me, like there’s something there for me. Some kind of nourishment. It’s like something I gotta do.”
Aladdin hits cinemas from 22 May.