While we’ve heard from The Academy and two out of three co-hosts about the slap that occurred at Sunday’s Oscars ceremony, producer Will Packer has finally chosen to speak out publicly on the events. Packer seemed to defend the choice of letting Will Smith stay by suggesting that Chris Rock was “fine” with the actor not being removed.
Packer spoke with Good Morning America (See below) via Variety and gave his own version of Sunday’s altercation at the Oscars, including why Smith was allowed to stick around to receive his Best Actor award.
“I said, ‘Did he really hit you?’” the producer asked Rock after the slap. “And he looked at me, and he goes, ‘Yeah, I just took a punch from Muhammad Ali,’ as only Chris can. He was immediately in joke mode, but you could tell that he was very much still in shock.”
“I knew it was clearly a confrontational moment because of what was happening from Will in the audience, but I still wasn’t sure that he actually struck him,” Packer said. “I made that clear, like, ‘Rock, you tell me, whatever you want to do, brother,’ and he was telling me, ‘I’m fine.’”
Packer suggests Rock himself didn’t want Smith removed from the show after he slapped Rock for telling a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
“I immediately went to the Academy leadership that was on site, and I said, ‘Chris Rock doesn’t want that.’” Packer continued, “I said, ‘Rock has made it clear that he does not want to make a bad situation worse.’ That was Chris’ energy. His tone was not retaliatory, it was not angry, so I was advocating what Rock wanted in that time, which was not to physically remove Will Smith at that time because, as it has now been explained to me, that was the only option at that point.”
The producer then reflected on Smith’s standing ovation from the attendees and how he hoped his speech for Best Actor would fix the situation.
“It doesn’t make anything that he did right, and doesn’t excuse that behavior at all, but I think that the people in that room who stood up stood up for somebody who they knew, who was a peer, who was a friend, who was a brother, who has a three decades-plus long career of being the opposite of what we saw in that moment…I don’t think that these were people that were applauding anything at all about that moment.”
“I think what many of us were hoping was that he would go on that stage and make it better,” Packer told GMA.
However, Deadline’s reporting contradicts Packer’s comments by stating that Rock was never asked about removing Smith and the producer is “conflating” a conversation with Rock about not pressing charges/calling the police.
These comments from Packer come after The Academy claims they asked Smith to leave, but the actor refused.
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