Unlike Chris Rock, fellow comedian and Oscars co-host Amy Schumer didn’t hold back with her opinions on The Slap during her stand-up comedy show at the Mirage Theater in Las Vegas on Saturday. This comes after Schumer said she was “traumatized” and “triggered” by Will Smith assaulting Rock at the Oscars in an Instagram post.
Excerpts from the weekend gig were picked up by Vanity Fair, as the popular comic referred to Smith as “Ali,” the famed boxer he plays in the Michael Mann film, and how the slap was an example of “toxic masculinity.”
“I was kind of feeling myself…and then all of a sudden Ali was making his way up. And it was just a fucking bummer. All I can say is that it was really sad, and I think it says so much about toxic masculinity. It was really upsetting, but I think the best way to comfort ourselves would be for me to say the Oscar jokes that I wasn’t allowed to say on TV.”
Schumer then shared a handful of rejected jokes from the Oscars, including one commenting on the “Rust” shooting that occurred when a gun loaded with live ammunition, held by actor/producer Alec Baldwin, fired, striking and killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was mentioned in the show’s In Memoriam segment.
“I want to preface these Oscar jokes by saying that my lawyer said not to say these. Don’t tell anybody and don’t get mad at me,” Schumer primed the audience before launching into her Baldwin joke. “’Don’t Look Up’ is the name of a movie? More like don’t look down the barrel of Alec Baldwin’s shotgun.”
Schumer had planned jokes about anti-vaxxer podcast host Joe Rogan and James Franco‘s sexual misconduct allegations that didn’t make the cut for the Oscars either. It’s unclear why those would be considered too controversial, but the “Rust” joke was too insensitive for ABC/producers for obvious reasons.
Commenting on the censorship of the material, Schumer reiterated, “I wasn’t allowed to say any of that [at the Oscars], but you can just come up and [slap] someone.”
Rock also had a show last week in Boston but focused on his prepared material instead of directly commenting on the slap or the Oscars in a major way. Instead, he simply stated he was still “processing what happened” and would comment on it “at some point.”