Well, March 29th will be remembered for another Oscar Tale of Hollywood. Rumors say AMPAS wants to take away Will Smith’s Best Actor Oscar because he slapped Chris Rock when he joked about Jada Pinkett-Smith’s hair while he was on stage, giving out an award. Violence of any kind isn’t welcome at the Academy, which has a set of rules about how to act. The Oscars deserve to be celebrated by their peers and movie fans all over the world at the 94th Academy Awards tonight.
The Academy rewrote its Code of Conduct in 2017 because of the Me Too movement. Academy membership is only available to a small group of filmmakers around the world; AMPAS CEO Dawn Hudson wrote to members after a number of scandals in the industry. Sunday night in the Dolby Theater there was complete confusion in the moments after a fight broke out. People thought the slap attack was part of a stunt at first.
Smith’s colourful language quickly made it clear that this was not a joke at all. People were scrambling to figure out a way to deal with Smith getting punched on the air while he was still waiting for his Best Actor award. The security guards would have almost certainly taken Smith out of the auditorium for the slap in normal circumstances. Smith was slapped right before the Best Actor award was going to be given out.
Only two people in the building knew that Smith was going to win the Oscar. Two accountants from Price Waterhouse Coopers were in charge of the Oscars results before the envelopes were handed out and opened onstage. Producers didn’t know who would win, so they couldn’t figure out how to deal with the attack. People who work for Smith could be seen hurrying to get to his side as the actor sat back down next to his wife.
The LAPD was also told about what happened on stage, but it later turned out that no one had filed a complaint about the show. It was during the ad break that Will Smith was comforted by Denzel Washington, who made a gesture for him to brush it off. When the Oscars were over, Smith’s publicist kept talking to him during the last commercial breaks, which were quickly added to the show while the producers worked to calm him down behind the scenes.
People who came to the Academy Awards were told not to ask any of the actors who were there about the slap that was seen all over the world. Afterward, everyone was talking about it a lot. Fifteen minutes after the attack, Smith, who looked very shaken, won the Best Actor award. In a tearful speech, he tried to link his outburst to his character in King Richard as someone who “defended his family.”
When he was nominated for an Oscar, he also took a moment to say sorry to the Academy and to his fellow nominees. But now, there are calls for him to be stripped of the award because of what he did. ‘It’s basically a fight. This is what one executive said to the New York Post:
“Everyone in the room was so shocked, it was so uncomfortable.” ‘I think Will doesn’t want to give back his Oscar, but who knows what will happen now?’
Director Judd Apatow was disgusted by the behavior he saw on stage.
“He could have killed him, but didn’t. That’s pure rage and violence that has gone too far. Everybody has made jokes about them for the last three decades. None of them are new to the world of Hollywood or comedy. He went crazy”