Will Smith and cast welcome a new face into MIB franchise

Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are back after a 10-year hiatus to protect planet earth from the ‘scum of the universe’ in Men In Black III.

There’s an added component to the series this time around - a younger version of Tommy Lee’s Agent K, played by Josh Brolin.

In this instalment, Smith’s Agent J travels back to 1969 to stop criminal alien Boris, played by ‘Flight Of The Conchords’ star Jermaine Clement, from killing K and changing the course of the planet.

Brolin had already impressed with his impression of former American president George Bush in movie ‘W’.

Few would argue about his impersonation of veteran actor Jones either - he looks perfect for the part of a younger Agent K.

Having bonded with Jones on the first two films, Smith admits he was “terrified” by the prospect brining in Brolin as another K.

He says: “What was exciting to me about doing this is how dangerous and almost foolish it was to try to make ‘Men In Black’ and introduce a new actor [to play K]. There’s a certain rhythm and chemistry you develop after you’ve worked with someone a certain amount of times, you know?

“It’s like a great lover, where you just fall in sync and you just know things then you get a new girlfriend or boyfriend...” he says laughing. “But what was interesting was, it was almost identical.

“The rhythm, the intonation, the chemistry was just identical. I was amazed at how on the first day, first scene [with Brolin], there was nothing I had to do differently. It was almost the exact interaction as with Tommy Lee Jones.”

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Will Smith is known as a serious actor thanks to Oscar-nominated roles in ‘Ali’ and ‘Pursuit of Happyness’ but he’s still got a soft spot for the ‘Men In Black’ trilogy. He says his career might have been very different if it weren’t for the comic breakthrough he had with the first film in 1997, which came just a year after he finished working on long-running sitcom ‘The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air’.

Smith recalls: “It was the first opportunity to play comedy on that level. It’s a really strange world in ‘Men In Black’. You don’t see a lot of fantasy comedies. It’s a difficult mark to hit. So it was a really wonderful lesson in comedy and in performance. For me, it’s probably been the most tricky franchise I’ve worked on and educationally, one of the best movies I’ve ever been around.”