The backlash to his improvised routine was swift. Jay Leno canceled Lawrence’s subsequent “Tonight Show” appearance, and the monologue was later released in an edited version on YouTube. But Lawrence, who was known for his raunchy routines, was unapologetic. “If I don’t know anything else, I know what it takes to make a person laugh,” he told the Los Angeles Times soon after. “People have to have the right to laugh, or else you’re going to have a lot more of us going crazy. If you can get past the language and have fun with what I’m talking about, I’m going to help keep you mentally healthy.” As far as he was concerned, the “SNL” brouhaha was just excellent publicity. “My fans know me, and they’re not surprised by anything I say,” he insisted. “And right now, a lot more people are asking, ‘Who is Martin Lawrence?’”

The question didn’t always yield encouraging answers, however, as Lawrence began to develop a reputation for being a difficult, testy individual. During “Martin’s” run, Lawrence fired Carew (also his manager) as part of his desire to control the show’s direction. “I have more say, so if I don’t like something, we won’t do it,” he told Vibe about Carew’s ouster. “If I do like something, we do.”

To be fair, women and artists of color are often labeled “difficult” in a derogatory fashion—whereas famous hardheaded white creative types like, say, Taylor Sheridan are celebrated for sticking to their guns. Nonetheless, as Lawrence and Smith were heading into “Bad Boys,” the former dealt with controversy while the latter enjoyed a chummy rapport with the press. Smith had been the family-friendly rapper who gave us breezy hits like “Summertime,” and while “Fresh Prince” was hardly groundbreaking, it cemented his lovable onscreen persona, demonstrating he wasn’t “just” a musician. Plus, he’d demonstrated his dramatic chops with 1993’s Oscar-nominated “Six Degrees of Separation.” (Pity he was so weird at the time about his character’s same-sex kiss.) Smith’s public demeanor was friendly and big-hearted, while Lawrence was more guarded—a contrast made apparent in that Vibe profile of the two actors. (Writer Scott Poulson-Bryant clearly had a better time talking to the open Smith than the defensive Lawrence.) Still, Lawrence felt no rivalry with his co-star—if anything, he was excited about the prospect of them being a comedy duo. 

“You never see two brothers from different networks getting together to do something like this,” Lawrence told Poulson-Bryant. “But we had a lot of fun. We worked hard together. Since both of us have comic timing on the sitcoms, we knew it was just a matter of getting together and finding out how we complemented each other.”

As many know, the script was originally intended for Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz—that’s how long ago the original “Bad Boys” was—but eventually became the coming-out party for Lawrence and Smith, not to mention first-time feature filmmaker Michael Bay. And that exuberance is “Bad Boys’” best quality—the sense that the leads and their director are all jazzed about being allowed to get away with everything they do in that film. When Lawrence was preparing to release “You So Crazy,” he had to fight with the ratings board, which slapped the concert film with an NC-17 because of the language, and you can feel his glee at being filthy in a big action movie.