It’s undisputable that the Oscars is Hollywood‘s night of nights, and taking home an Academy Award is what many consider to be the pinnacle of their careers.
Customarily, winners of specific categories present the award the following year, and if it’s a gender-specific category, it’s the inverse – for example, Anthony Hopkins, who won Best Actor for The Father in 2021 presented Jessica Chastain with Best Actress in 2022 for The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
But Will Smith, who won Best Actor for his role in King Richardwas not invited back to attend the Oscars the next year, nor will he be for a very long time.
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Where has Will Smith been since the Oscars Slap?
After he committed what is now known as the “Oscars slap”, the actor has been banned from the awards ceremony for 10 years.
Since the on-stage drama, the actor has had a quiet two years on the career front, with the actor having been dropped from many of his projects after the infamous incident.
Of note was his 2022 historical film Emancipation, playing a runaway slave. He has just finished wrapping up shooting his new upcoming film, Bad Boys 4, which is slated for release in June.
However, details of his personal life have been aired for the world to see after his wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith released her tell-all memoir, Worthy, last year.
In it, she dropped the bombshell that she and Smith had in fact lived separately since 2016, though they have no plans on getting a divorce.
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She revealed the news to US TV host Hoda Kotb, telling her the couple had not previously gone public with their separation because they were not “ready yet”.
They were “still trying to figure out between the two of us, how to be in partnership,” she said in a clip from her NBC News primetime special.
She later said that the slap in fact fortified their relationship and she was thankful for it.
“I call it the ‘holy slap’ now because so many positive things came after it,” she commented.
“That moment of the s–t hitting the fan is when you see where you really are,” she said.
“After all those years trying to figure out if I would leave Will’s side, it took that slap for me to see I will never leave him. Who knows where our relationship would be if that hadn’t happened?”
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How did the Oscars slap happen?
In case you need a refresher on what happened that fateful night, the controversy began about three quarters into the 2022 Oscars awards ceremony, just before (and consequently, to the chagrin of many, overshadowing) CODA‘s Best Picture win.
Rock, 58, as he was introducing the award for Best Documentary Feature, made an ad-libbed joke about 51-year-old Pinkett Smith’s appearance, specifically her bald hairstyle.
”Jada, I love you, G.I. Jane 2, can’t wait to see it,” Rock said on-stage, in reference to 1997’s G.I. Jane, which saw a Demi Moore, with a shaved head, play a soldier entering the armed forces.
Pinkett Smith, who has been open about her journey with the autoimmune disease alopecia and began shaving her head in 2021 when “problem” hairless spots became harder to hide, was shown rolling her eyes at Rock’s joke, while Smith, at first, laughed.
But before the world – and Oscars attendees including Lupita Nyong’o – knew it, Smith stormed the stage, slapped Rock, and returned to his seat.
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As everyone was trying to figure out if the move was scripted, Rock deadpanned: “Will Smith just slapped the s–t out of me.”
Smith, meanwhile, shouted from his seat: “Keep my wife’s name out of your f–king mouth.”
“Wow, dude, it was a G.I. Jane joke,” Rock responded, while Smith repeated his previous sentiment.
Minutes later, Smith went on to win Best Actor, and in his speech he apologised to the Academy and his fellow nominees – but not to Rock.
Rock said when he made the joke, he was not aware of Pinkett Smith’s well-documented battle with alopecia.
Will Smith’s apology tour
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The Focus star’s next apology came days after the ceremony, shared in a statement on March 28.
Smith described, in the statement, his behaviour at the Oscars as ”unacceptable and inexcusable”, writing: “Violence in all of its forms is poisonous and destructive.”
Months later after an extended period of social media silence, Smith made another apology, this time on-camera, in a YouTube video titled, “It’s been a minute…”
In that video, he explained why he didn’t apologise to Rock in his Best Actor speech, saying he was “fogged out by that point” and it was “all fuzzy.”
”I’ve reached out to Chris and the message that came back is that he’s not ready to talk, and when he is he will reach out,” Smith said. “So I will say to you, Chris, I apologise to you.”
Smith’s mother also spoke out about The Slap, as did Pinkett Smith a month before her husband’s YouTube video, in a June episode of her talk-show Red Table Talk. And, one week before The Academy handed down their 10-year ban, Smith resigned his membership from the organisation.
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Oscars 2023 Award Ceremony
The Academy found itself in a difficult position with the following year’s ceremony, having been criticised for their lackluster response to the original incident – namely, letting Smith, who went on to win big, stay to collect his award and address the world –but unable to ignore it.
Ahead of the ceremony, they had announced in February that it had implemented its first-ever “crisis team” to handle unexpected incidents.
2023 host Jimmy Kimmel also promised to be “unslappable” ahead of the ceremony, and during the gala, made many jokes at Smith’s expense.
Within the first few sentences of his opening monologue, Kimmel had already made a reference to the infamous incident.
“Five Irish actors are nominated tonight, which means the chances of a fight just went way up,” Kimmel joked.
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“We want you to have fun, feel safe and, most importantly, we want me to feel safe,” he continued, before unleashing on those in the audience for their apparent lack of support for Rock last year in the aftermath of the incident.
“So, we have strict policies in pace. If anyone in this theater commits an act of violence at any point during the show, you will be awarded the Oscar for best actor and permitted to give a 19-minute long speech.
“But seriously, the academy has a crisis team in place. If anything unpredictable or violent happens during the show, sit there and do absolutely nothing. Maybe even give the assailant a hug,” Kimmel said, perhaps in reference to Tyler Perry and Denzel Washington, who were seen comforting Smith shortly after The Slap.
“And if any of you get mad at a joke and decide you want to get jiggy with it – it’s not going to be easy,” Kimmel said in conclusion, before pointing to on-screen fighters Michael B. Jordan and Michelle Yeoh and shouting them out as his defenders.
As the drama-free gala hit the two-hour mark, Kimmel quipped: ”At this point in the show, it kind of makes you miss the slapping a little bit, right?”
And, finally, after Everything Everywhere All at Once had taken out Best Picture, Kimmel ended his hosting duties with one last dig.
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Seen walking backstage, he flipped a sign titled ”Number of Oscars Telecasts Without Incident” from zero to one – officially ending the broadcast.
Smith’s absence was made the most obvious in the presentation of the 2023 Best Actress award.
As Best Actor Winner, it was customary for Smith to present the award to the next year’s Best Actress. But 2023 Oscars viewers found that in his place, presenting the gongs for Best Actress and Best Actor in 2023, was 2001 Oscar-winner Halle Berry.
Per tradition, Chastain took to the stage after winning last year’s Best Actress. Smith was notably nowhere to be seen, with Berry standing beside Chastain instead.
It remains unclear why Berry was specifically chosen to stand in for Smith – however she did win Best Actress in 2001 for the film Monster’s Ball, which also marked the first time a Black woman won the award since the Oscars began in 1929.
Two decades on, Berry remains the only Black woman to have won the coveted accolade.
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Chris Rock breaks his silence one year on with ‘misogynoir’
Compared to Smith, Rock was positively silent about the incident – almost. He also declined to file a formal police report about the assault, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
The Grown Ups star’s first public acknowledgement of The Slap was during a stand-up show three days after the Oscars, where he briefly addressed it by saying he was “still kind of processing what happened” and “other than the weird thing, life is pretty good.”
In July 2022, he also said he was not a victim, but it wasn’t until a live Netflix special filmed in Baltimore – Pinkett Smith’s hometown – and aired in Australia on March 5, 2023, that Rock fully broke his silence.
In the 70-minute set, Rock did mention Smith briefly in the introduction, saying: “I’m going to try to do a show tonight without offending nobody. I’m going to try my best, because you never know who might get triggered.”
“People always say words hurt… anybody who says words hurt has never been punched in the face,” he said.
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Other than that, Rock largely kept the remarks everyone had waited almost 12 months to hear until last, and in the last 10 minutes of the set, he did not hold back on Smith.
“You all know what happened to me, getting smacked by Shug Smith,” Rock said. “It still hurts. I got Summertime ringing in my ears. But I’m not a victim, baby. You’ll never see me on Oprah or Gayle crying… I took that hit like Pacquiao.”
”I love Will Smith, my whole life,” Rock said. “I have rooted for Will Smith my whole life… now I watch Emancipation just to see him get whooped.”
Smith plays an enslaved man in the period drama, Emancipation.
“‘How come you didn’t do nothing back that night?'” Rock said people have asked him. “Because I got parents. You know what my parents taught me? Don’t fight in front of white people.”
Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and Chris Rock’s complicated ‘entanglement’
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There was a mixed response to Rock’s Netflix special, however, online, and while it’s long been established his offending joke, and The Slap, were not scripted, many began looking closer at Smith, Pinkett Smith, and Rock’s history before the 2022 Oscars.
Many resurfaced their criticism of Rock using Pinkett Smith’s hairstyle as a target, considering the sensitivity of the topic of hair in particular for women of colour, a subject matter Rock actually produced a documentary on in 2009 after his daughter asked him why she didn’t have “good hair”.
Others, meanwhile, again highlighted Rock having targeted Pinkett Smith once before, during his opening monologue at the 2016 Oscars – which Pinkett Smith boycotted over the lack of diversity among acting nominees.
They then criticised his apparent misogynoir in his Netflix special, which featured many jokes at Pinkett Smith’s expense – despite the fact it was Smith who slapped Rock, based on a joke Rock made about Pinkett Smith, seemingly unprovoked.
”Jada says she’s not coming. Protesting. I’m like, ‘Isn’t she on a TV show?’ Jada’s gonna boycott the Oscars? Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. I wasn’t invited,” Rock said in his 2016 Oscars speech, to which Pinkett Smith later responded by saying the joke “comes with the territory.”
He also, at the time, made a jab at Smith – with whom he had previously worked in a 1995 episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – after he and his film Concussion (2015) were seemingly snubbed from the nominations list.
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”Jada’s mad her man Will was not nominated for Concussion. I get it, I get it. Tell you the truth, I get it. You get mad. Said it’s not fair that Will was this good and didn’t get nominated. You’re right,” Rock said in 2016. “It’s also not fair that Will was paid $20 million for Wild Wild West, OK?”
In his 2023 Netflix special, Rock revisited the 2016 Oscars, claiming Pinkett Smith (who he referred to as a “bitch”) “started this s–t” by urging him to boycott the event and forfeit his hosting gig to stand in solidarity with the #OscarsSoWhite movement.
“She said, me, a grown-ass man, should quit his job [as 2016 Oscars host] because her husband didn’t get nominated for Concussion,” Rock said in the special, aired seven years later. “Then he gave me a concussion!”
Soon after, Rock made a dig at Smith and Pinkett Smith’s marriage, saying: “Will Smith practices selective outrage… because everybody knows what the f–k happened. Everybody that really knows, knows I had nothing to do with that s–t. I didn’t have any ‘entanglements.'”
As made into a meme mid-2020, Rock’s “entanglements” reference was in regard to Pinkett Smith coming clean about her extra-marital relationship with August Alsina, which she referred to in an episode of Red Table Talk as an “entanglement”. In 2021, Smith revealed that he and Pinkett Smith, at one point in their 26-year marriage, had decided to become non-monogamous.
Rock, meanwhile, also called Pinkett Smith’s relationship with Alsina by a crassier term, saying she was “f–king her son’s friend.”
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Alsina, at the time of the “entanglement”, was 22, and was friends with both Jaden Smith, then around 16, and Willow Smith, then around 14.
In comparison, Rock also boasted in another part of the Netflix special about his preference for dating younger women, at one point saying: ”I didn’t get rich and stay in shape to talk to Anita Baker [65]. I’m trying to f–k Doja Cat [27, three years younger than Alsina’s current age. Rock is seven years older than Pinkett Smith].”
Driving his point home, and once again laying the blame on Pinkett Smith, Rock rejected the premise that Smith entered into the non-monogamous arrangement with Pinkett Smith willingly, and implied Pinkett Smith humiliated her husband with her “entanglement”.
Rock’s conclusion? “She hurt him way more than he hurt me.”
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