You may want to avoid anything on Twitter dealing with Will Smith or Chris Rock over the next 24 hours. Or maybe the entire week. Actually, in this decade’s extraordinarily quick news cycle, the event may be tossed aside by the general public within the next day or so, but one thing is for sure: what occurred the actors during the 94th Academy Awards telecast will not be forgotten by Academy members any time soon.
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There were probably a number of things on Academy members’ minds over the course of the 2022 Oscars ceremony. First, the eight category winners awarded before the official 5 PM PT start time had to sit in the Dolby Theater and watch edited versions of their taped speeches during the telecast. This was after The Academy and the show’s producers had insisted only their time from their seats to the podium would be cut from the show. Second, outside of some fantastic musical performances (Beyonce and Billie Eilish especially), and genuinely funny monologues from Regina Hall, Amy Schumer, and Wanda Sykes, the telecast hadn’t seemed to justify pushing the eight below-the-line and short categories to a pre-show status. The Twitter-voted moments were embarrassing, the James Bond salute was a forgettable montage with no payoff and, for the most part, the “reunions” didn’t amount to much. Moreover, by the time the Oscar history-making moment took place, the show was already running significantly late.
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And then the Will Smith and Chris Rock incident occurred. Later in the show, Smith won his first Best Actor trophy. He apologized to his wife and family, but not to Rock. Many in the Dolby Theater say the tenor in the room never recovered with most people on their phones trying to figure out what happened.
At 10:14 PM PT, a little under an hour after the telecast had ended, The Academy tweeted out the following: “The Academy does not condone violence of any form. Tonight we are delighted to celebrate our 94th Academy Awards winners, who deserve this moment of recognition from their peers and movie lovers around the world.”
There has been no further comment.
Social media has exploded over whether Smith was justified in walking on stage and slapping Rock after the former two-time host made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. From our perspective, there is no excuse for physically assaulting someone and we’re going to leave it at that. The question is how Academy members and the AMPAS Board of Governors will react to the events.
The fact that nothing was said during the telecast and/or Smith was not removed from the theater (again, he was expected to win Best Actor) was a major topic of conversation at the Governors Ball following the show. The behind-the-scenes of who decided what and why will no doubt be dissected for weeks if not months to come. And notable Academy members have already publicly made it clear their frustration over how the incident was handled. Is it possible Smith has his Oscar taken away? It’s an option in the bylaws, but very unlikely. Will he be suspended from the organization for a brief period of time? Possibly. Will nothing happen at all? Possibly.
From a historical perspective, this is not the first time the Academy has had to deal with physical violence at a ceremony. In 1973, six armed guards had to old back John Wayne backstage after Sacheen Littlefeather accepted Marlon Brando’s Best Actor Oscar on his behalf. And many will point out that Roman Polanski won a Best Director Oscar as recently as 2003, Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault and harassment behavior was ignored for decades, and Woody Allen won an Original Screenplay statue as recently as 2012. How is this different? It will depend on who you ask.
The fact that Rock declined to press charges is the first sign that both men will want this incident to go away very quickly. And, despite skipping the backstage Oscars press room, Smith still partied the night away at the annual Vanity Fair soiree.
But Monday morning’s Los Angeles Times featured the bold headline “Chaos in Hollywood” with a photo of the slap at the top of the front page. This is not what The Academy, its Board, or ABC was hoping for after last year’s record-low ratings. Or on a night that saw “CODA” make history on a number of fronts, Ariana DeBose become the first publicly out, Queer woman and Troy Kotsur the first deaf male actor to win Academy Awards. This was the night one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Smith, was finally going to land an Oscar. Instead, he was in the middle of an altercation that many will want to forget.
Unfortunately, it continues what has been a decade of either self-inflicted or accidental controversies that have barely allowed the organization to breathe. From Bret Ratner resigning as Oscars producer over a gay slur to #OscarsSoWhite to an insane Best Picture flub to member and public pushback over an Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film Oscar to Kevin Hart quitting as Oscar host over old homophobic tweets to an Oscar Museum with cost overruns to previous attempts to remove below-the-line categories from the broadcast, more often than not, the Academy is having to put out at least one massive fire every year.
How they handle this one is anyone’s guess, but you can be assured not everyone will be happy about it.