There’s one thing that everyone’s talking about after Sunday’s 94th Academy Awards, and it’s not Best Picture winner CODA; it’s the completely unexpected public “fight” between host Chris Rock and Best Actor winner Will Smith.
Will Smith wins the Best Actor Oscar for King Richard / Doug Peters/PA Wire/PA Images
Our hearts stopped when we watched Will Smith stride up to the stage and land a hard slap across Chris Rock’s cheek, before shouting obscenities at him from the crowd while Chris himself struggled to gather himself. It's just not what we expect from celebrities.
But is it just us or was it the weirdest reaction ever? Let’s look at the scene in detail…
“You know who’s got the hardest job tonight?” Chris said, setting up a joke. “Javier Bardem and his wife are both nominated. Now, if he loses, she can’t win! He is praying that Will Smith wins like, ‘Please Lord!’”
His segue into Will Smith leads him onto his next joke: “Jada, I love ya, G.I. Jane 2, can’t wait to see it”.
If you’re confused about that quip, it’s a reference to Will’s wife Jada Pinkett-Smith shaving her head. She revealed on social media last year that she was struggling with alopecia; a condition characterized by hair loss.
Naturally, Jada didn’t look too pleased about the joke and promptly rolled her eyes. Will, who had been laughing at the Javier Bardem joke, appeared to laugh again at the G.I. Jane quip, before getting out of his seat and making straight for Chris.
“Uh oh!” Chris says as he watches Will rise from his seat and saunter over. Apparently nothing in Will’s face tells Chris that he’s about to get an almighty slap, as he stands there laughing until he is struck in the face. Will walks away looking a little smug, and it’s hard to tell whether or not the whole thing was a bit of playfighting. That is until what happened next.
“Oh, wow!” Chris said. “Will Smith just smacked the sh*t outta me!” There’s nervous laughter from the audience before we hear Will aggressively shout: “Keep my wife’s name out your f***ing mouth!”
“It was a G.I. Jane joke,” Chris said defensively, before Will repeats himself with slightly more venom: “Keep my wife’s name out your f***ing mouth!” At this point, he isn’t smiling; the fury is evident all over his face.
But why did Will react in such a way after initially laughing at the joke? Chances are it took his brain a couple of seconds to catch up and he started laughing before he realised what was said. The camera cut away from his face so we couldn’t see what happened to his expression between his laughing and his slapping Chris.
There’s also the likelihood that Will, who had been looking at Chris while he did the joke, glanced over at his wife after laughing and saw that she was unimpressed, and so he took the opportunity to defend her.
A clue in Will Smith’s emotional acceptance speech when he won Best Actor for King Richard may also hold the answer.
“I know to do what we do you gotta be able to take abuse, you gotta be able to have people talk crazy about you. In this business you gotta be able to have people disrespecting you and you gotta smile, you gotta pretend like that’s okay,” he said tearfully. “I wanna apologise to the Academy, I wanna apologise to all my fellow nominees.”
Perhaps in that moment where he was laughing at a joke at the expense of his wife, he realised he was fed up of smiling while being disrespected and decided to bite back instead. But it’s clear from his later speech that he deeply regretted losing control in that moment.
He didn’t apologise to Chris, however, and he appeared to defend his actions by saying “love will make you do crazy things”. He also jokingly expressed his hope that the Academy invited him back to future awards shows.
Many viewers are wondering if this beef between Will and Chris started in 2016 when Will and Jada campaigned to boycott the Academy Awards over the lack of nominations for black actors. Chris said at the show: “Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna's panties — I wasn't invited.”
He also went on to criticise Will for one of his previous movie roles: “It's not fair that Will was this good and didn't get nominated [for Concussion]. It's also not fair that Will was paid $20 million for Wild Wild West.”
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Certainly, these comments have shaped the Smiths’ opinion of the comedian, and may have had a bearing on Will’s reaction to his comments over the weekend. Unfortunately, there are rumours that Will may be asked to hand back his Oscar because of his behaviour; a huge blow given that it’s his first win in about 36 years of being a Hollywood superstar. But at least it seems that Chris is not expected to press charges.
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