The studio thought Will Smith would wreck Independence Day's global box office
In a new oral history of the film, writer-producer Dean Devlin and director Roland Emmerich detail the fight to get Smith cast

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The cast of Independence Day (and director Roland Emmerich, second from the right) at the film’s premiere in 1996. Photo: JEFF HAYNES/AFP via Getty Images
It’s not hard to peg Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin’s Independence Day as the moment Will Smith went from “Will Smith, well-known rapper and potentially promising sitcom actor” to “Will Smith, no further qualifiers needed.” Building off the previous year’s Bad Boys, Independence Day transformed Smith into the go-to Hollywood blockbuster star of the next several years, comfortable with comedy and action alike. But, as revealed in a new Hollywood Reporter oral history of the film, it almost didn’t happen—because studio executives were convinced that international movie markets wouldn’t respond to a Black lead.