“I’ve always wanted to be in a Bollywood dance sequence,” American actor-singer Will Smith states in the sixth episode of his online show, Will Smith’s Bucket List. In this episode, he crosses off Bollywood Dancing off his bucket list.
Smith’s Facebook show has the popular Hollywood star and rapper take up things which scare him (swimming with sharks) or things which embarrass him (dancing).
The actor loves visiting India. “Everything about this culture speaks to my personality. India has always had this otherworldly pull on me. There’s something there for me,” he explains in the episode as he rides around Mumbai in a rickshaw.
Smith meets up with actor Ranveer Singh who teaches the Hollywood star about local slang like paisa vasool and shows him how a hero makes an entry via his film Goliyon Ki RaasLeela Raam-Leela (2013).
Smith also travels to Haridwar, Uttarakhand in the episode where he participates in a Hindu prayer ritual to Shiva and visits the banks of the river Ganges.
Finally, back in Mumbai, Smith sits down with filmmaker Karan Johar and Singh for a chat about religious imagery in Hindi cinema songs and dialogue baazi using Deewaar (1975).
The Hollywood actor joins Johar’s then-ongoing production of Student Of The Year 2 (2019) directed by Punit Malhotra for a song sequence. However, the night before, the actor confesses, “I can’t dance. It always makes me nervous.”
Smith struggles with the Bollywood dance steps during rehearsal, but during the song shoot, he pulls off the dance steps to the song ‘Radha’ from the 2012 film, Student Of The Year. The sequel’s stars Tiger Shroff, Tara Sutaria and Ananya Pandey are also part of the sequence, choreographed by Remo D’Souza.
“I’ve been in the business for over 30 years and this moment has re-connected me to why I do this,” Will states after the sequence is captured on film.
Student Of The Year 2 (2019), produced by Karan Johar, is due to be released on 10 May 2019.
Watch the full episode of Will Smith’s Bucket List here.