NEW ORLEANS - Residents and visitors to New Orleans have actor Will Smith to thank for the fireworks display on Independence Day.

Mr. Smith picked up the roughly $100,000 tab for the pyro- technics over the Missis- sippi River after learning New Orleans didn’t plan a 2021 show, city officials told news outlets.

New Orleans canceled last year’s fireworks because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Smith is in New Orleans working on his latest film “Emancipation,” which will tell the story of a slave, Peter, who escaped a Louisiana plantation and whose photo of scars on his back from being whipped exposed the brutality of slavery.

Mr. Smith moved production of the film from Georgia to Louisiana in early April after Georgia passed a new voting law that prompted a federal lawsuit saying the overhaul was intended to deny Black voters equal access to the ballot.