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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
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Nancy Durrant

Will Smith’s slap of Chris Rock was the stuff of 3am street brawls. Please, grow up

Yikes. Right? Last night was, in case you hadn’t noticed, the first IRL Academy Awards ceremony since 2020, but despite a number of fabulous firsts, the only thing anyone is talking about is Will Smith making an absolute ass of himself by charging onto the stage and slapping Chris Rock around the face for making an insensitive joke about his lady wife.

Context: Jada Pinkett Smith has publicly spoken about her struggle with alopecia for several years, and made the decision to shave her head last year. Rock’s (not funny) joke was to suggest that she play GI Jane. The gag didn’t land with the Oscars audience, who groaned, and Pinkett Smith rolled her eyes, but nobody was expecting Smith’s slap. Rock was astonished and shaken. Smith yelled “Keep my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth” twice, from his seat, amid a shocked silence.

Minutes later, he won Best Actor and wept, apologising to the Academy and his fellow nominees (though not to Rock), thanking the Williams family for entrusting him with their story and stating “I wanna be a vessel for love.” 

“Making this film ... I got to protect Saniyya [Sidney] and Demi [Singleton], the two actresses that played Venus and Serena. I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people,” he said. He added God made him do it.

Smith (for whom I’ve had a soft spot since his Fresh Prince days) seems to think there are a lot of women who need his protection. And there’s a lot of chat online saying he was quite right to leap to his wife’s defence.

Mate, no. We all want our partner to stick up for us, but on what level is it acceptable for a grown man to walk up to another grown man and punch him?

Why do men react like this, still, to a moderate (if mean-spirited) slight? Watching the clip online made my stomach turn over. I would be shocked if it happened outside a dodgy nightclub at 3am. That it happened on live television and involved a man of such international status as a role model for men and boys, and who subsequently won an award for a film that preaches the importance and possibility of stoic determination, drive and dignity in the face of adversity and prejudice, is terrible. It sets a bloody awful example, and it sucked the oxygen out of anybody else’s triumph, as well as Smith’s own.

I can’t speak for Venus and Serena Williams, who looked generous and supportive as Smith gave his speech, but it does seem a damn shame that a film that tells their incredible story will be sullied by this mortifying display. Troy Kotsur, who won Best Supporting Actor, is only the first deaf man to win an Academy Award. Ariana DeBose (Best Supporting Actress) is the first queer woman of colour to do so — having previously made her name on Broadway. Her win will be transformative, both in terms of the kind of work she’s offered and the money she can command. It’s wonderful. Everyone should be talking about her, but they’re not.

Will, you’ve let everyone down, and it’s just really sad.

So let’s stop talking about him, and hail the women at the helm of the whole thing, hosts Wanda Sykes,  Amy Schumer and Regina Hall.

Apart from the obligatory clunky stunt (try saying that quickly) in which Schumer “got stuck” hanging from the ceiling dressed as Spider-Man, they were great. They were funny, pointed (“This year the Academy hired three women to host, because it’s cheaper than one man,” quipped Schumer), moderately political (“We’re going to have a great night. And for those of you watching in Florida, we’re going to have a gay night,” said Sykes, referring to the state’s proposed restrictions on discussing LGBTQ+ life in classrooms), and then made the now legally-required joke about the age of Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriends, which will never not amuse me.

Bring them back next year please.

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