WILL SMITH. The actor has announced his resignation from the Academy of Oscars after slapping Chris Rock. He is under disciplinary proceedings and several of his projects are put on hold.
Since the 2022 Oscars ceremony, all eyes have been on Will Smith. Minutes before receiving the Best Actor award, the 53-year-old American star slapped Chris Rock on stage after an inappropriate joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair (and illness). Under disciplinary proceedings, the actor took the lead and announced that he was resigning from the organization.
In a statement, Will Smith said his action was “shocking, painful and inexcusable. The list of those I have hurt is long and includes Chris, his family, many of my dear friends and loved ones, and everyone who was in the audience or in their homes. I resign as a Fellow of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and will accept whatever consequences the Board of Directors deems appropriate.”
For the time being, the Academy is still considering the most appropriate sanctions to take following this unprecedented gesture. We learned on March 30 in a press release from the Academy of Oscars that it had asked Will Smith to withdraw from the ceremony after having shown violence within the Dolby Theater. Smith, nominated (then crowned a few minutes later) for the Oscar for best actor for the film The Williams Method, then refused.
Since the famous slap during the Oscars, many have condemned or supported Will Smith. This gesture also has consequences for the career of the actor, since several film projects with Netflix or Sony have been put on hold. This is the case with the thriller Fast and Loose and the action movie bad boys 4.
If Will Smith hit Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars, it was above all because of a bad joke from the master of ceremonies. The comedian, who came to introduce the Oscar for best documentary, had made a joke about the wife of Will Smith, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and about her baldness due to disease, alopecia. He notably compared her to Demi Moore, bald in the film On equal terms. Will Smith didn’t like the joke at all, as he stood up and punched Chris Rock in the face, before yelling, “Leave my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth!”
This isn’t the first time Chris Rock has poked fun at Jada Pinkett Smith at the Oscars. He notably poked fun at the actress and Will Smith in 2016, when he hosted the 88th awards night. The couple had indeed called for a boycott of the ceremony, Jada Pinkett Smith deploring that her husband was not named and deploring the lack of diversity of the Academy. “What happened this year, asked Chris Rock during a speech. People went crazy. Spike [Lee] went crazy. Jada [Pinkett Smith] went mad. Will has gone mad. Everyone has gone mad! Jada said she wouldn’t sell […] Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. I wasn’t invited anyway!” Chris Rock has regularly made fun of the couple in the past, whether it’s about their private lives, their careers, or here Jada Pinkett Smith’s physique. The 2022 Oscars ceremony will obviously have been the last straw.
The slap given by Will Smith to Chris Rock caused amazement at the Oscars 2022. For a time, the question of a happening being part of the sketch arose. Quickly, when Will Smith shouted at Chris Rock using a language more than unusual in this kind of place, observers understood that it was not a scene, but a blow. actor’s blood. The reaction of Chris Rock, visibly shocked and struggling to regain his composure, has also been widely commented on since the incident, as proof that something went wrong during the ceremony. Before its press release announcing an investigation on Monday, the Academy reacted on its Twitter account to remind us that it was not “closing its eyes” to the acts of violence, however calling to celebrate the winners of the evening.
In the United States, the channel that broadcast the Oscars cut the sound at the time of the incident and commercial cuts quickly came to interrupt the evening.
