WILL SMITH AND MARTIN LAWRENCE HAVE BEEN CAUSING BUDDY-COP CHAOS SINCE 1995, AND BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE FURTHER CEMENTS AN UNBREAKABLE PARTNERSHIP. AS THEY TELL US, THEY REALLY ARE IN THIS FOR LIFE WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

Mike (Will Smith) and Marcus (Martin Lawrence) ride again;

Providing the villainy — Eric Dane, with Levy Tran;

Directors Bilall Fallah and Adil El Arbi flank Lawrence and Smith on set;

The vets with Dorn (Alexander Ludwig) and Kelly (Vanessa Hudgens);

Nothing to see here.

WILL SMITH JUST walked in on his mum doing something a little unexpected. “My mother watched Bad Boys last night,” he laughs. “She said she needed to catch up before the new one comes out.” Presumably, though, this wasn’t her first time watching the action comedy that, back in 1995, turned her son from the Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air into a freshly minted movie star, did the same for his co-star Martin Lawrence, and saw Michael Bay unleash his patented brand of Bayhem on an unsuspecting, unprepared world? Thankfully, no. “It was the first time she ever heard me curse, when Bad Boys came out,” continues Smith, with a chuckle. “She was shocked and appalled. She’s forgiven me.”

Improbably, Bad Boys —which tells the story of maverick Miami narcotics cops Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Lawrence) —came close to getting made with two completely different leading men, in the shape of Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz, before Carvey passed, prompting producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer to completely rethink their approach and retool the screenplay for African-American leads. They cast Lawrence, who was then hitting it big with his sitcom Martin, and it was he who had the bright idea of approaching another sitcom star, Smith. They hit it off immediately, and over the next three decades have taken that Lowrey-Burnett motto to heart: through thick or thin, through career peaks and troughs, through That Thing At The Oscars, they ride together, they die together. Bad Boys for life.

That friendship is apparent when Empire gets on the phone with Smith (who calls Lawrence ‘Marty-Mar’) and Lawrence (who calls Smith ‘Big Willie’) to talk about Bad Boys: Ride Or Die, the fourth instalment in an action-comedy franchise that, after 2020’s wildly successful, ridiculously entertaining Bad Boys For Life, has found unexpected momentum. Whatcha gonna do?