NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Fireworks are returning to New Orleans on Independence Day thanks to actor Will Smith.
City officials say Smith is picking up the roughly $100,000 tab for the pyrotechnics over the Mississippi River after learning New Orleans didn’t plan a 2021 show.
New Orleans cancelled last year’s fireworks because of COVID-19.
Smith is in New Orleans working on his latest film “Emancipation,” which will tell the story of a slave who escaped a Louisiana plantation and whose photo of scars on his back from being whipped exposed the brutality of slavery. He would also fight for the Union in the Civil War.
