WILL WATCHES CHRIS GARDNER

Will Smith studied Chris Gardner to portray his life in The Pursuit of Happyness.

Will Smith has portrayed real people before in films, most recently Mohammed Ali who was literally at his beck and call while shooting Ali. Will also had the luxury of working with Chris Gardner, the stock broker who came from extremely humble beginnings for the film The Pursuit of Happyness.

Will talks about what it’s like to capture Gardner’s life on the screen.

“It’s been very helpful to me to work with the actual people that the story is about. Having Ali on the set of Ali was perfection. You play a moment and it doesn’t feel right you say, ‘how’s that champ?’ It was the same thing with Chris Gardner. Chris was there every single day and the point is to capture the essence of the experience. We had two hours to take 10 years of Chris’ life and to crunch 10 years into two hours. And who better than Chris Gardner to assist with capturing the essence and the truth of what those moments felt like and what the experience was and the truth of the journey.”

Chris Gardner says at first he felt a little uncomfortable because Will would constantly be watching his every move.

“He was studying me. I had never been studied like that. But when he went on to explain to me that his work doing Ali was going to be easy compared to trying to do this because everyone knows Ali. They know the story, they know the history, they know how Ali will react but you, they don’t know. The time that we have spent together I see it on the film, I see it on the takes and a few times I have said to myself, ‘wow how did he know that?’ Somebody else explained it to me recently saying that while everyone else is watching Will, Will is watching you.”

Chris said having Will Smith portray his life was like having an out of body experience and a flashback at the same time. The Pursuit of Happyness opens today.