Will Smith recently talked about Vanessa Hudgens reprising her role in the Bad Boys: Ride or Die sequel.
The franchise won’t just see him and Martin Lawrence returning to their characters but the 35-year-old actress will also reprise her character of Kelly, a weapons expert who made her franchise debut in 2020’s Bad Boys For Life.
While the filming originally began in April 2023, the production was suspended in July 2023 when the actors union SAG-AFTRA went on strike.
After the strike ended in November, the shooting resumed, but at this point, Vanessa was expecting her first child.
Will now tells Entertainment Tonight that this led “to a filming shift” as he revealed that the directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah even considered “shooting around it.”
“So the strike happened [and] when she came back and we had to finish the movie, it was really [about] trying to figure out how to shoot around her bump,” Will revealed.
He also claimed that Vanessa is “a hard worker” and she “wants to get it done” the right way.
“I was like, ‘No, don’t worry. You’ll always be able to tell your child that they were in this scene with you,’” he joked.
Vanessa first revealed her baby bump at the 2024 Oscars red carpet as she’s expecting her child with professional baseball player Cole Tucker.