Brad Pitt Avoided Giving Donald Glover ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ Tips

In the latest case of a proper noun becoming a verb, you can now use “Brad Pitt” to mean “charm one’s way out of doing something.” Donald Glover debuted the phrase while promoting his Mr. & Mrs. Smith series, telling Entertainment Tonight on Jan. 31 that his attempts to get the actor to share tips about portraying John Smith were charmingly rebuffed. “He just Brad Pitted his way out of it,” Glover said, in part.

No Tips Here

Pitt famously starred opposite Angelina Jolie in the 2005 movie version of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. As Jane and John Smith, they were a pair of married spies who learned the truth of the other’s identity only when they were assigned each other as targets. Glover and Maya Erskine stepped into their shoes for Amazon’s reboot, so he thought Pitt could shed some light on his character.

“I was like, ‘I just need some tips,’ and he just charmed his way out of it,” Glover told ET. “He was like, ‘Oh, you’ll do great, kid.’ That kind of thing.”

Though Pitt didn’t add to Glover’s understanding of his character, he still had something to offer. “I mean, he was very, very sweet and nice and that was very helpful,” Glover said, before adding that he ultimately got “good advice.”

Taking A “Very Different” Direction

Pitt’s tips may not have applied anyway. The series is a “reimagining” of the movie, as Erskine described it on Capital XTRA Breakfast on Feb. 2, and the new characters are described as “two lonely strangers” who are paired up by a spy agency to pose as a married couple as they take on high-risk missions. “This is quite different from the film, so I would even think of it as its own project,” Erskine said.

Glover agreed during the same radio interview, adding that he’s “not a big remake person.” He co-created the series with Francesca Sloane, and he said he only wanted to do a version that would be “very different in a lot of ways.” Given that “the original left a lot up in the air,” he felt they had a chance to come up with their own perspective.

Fans got to see some of the differences for themselves when Prime Video debuted the official trailer on Jan. 11, and they can see even more now that Mrs. & Mrs. Smith has arrived on the streaming service.