Will Smith has won the Oscar for best actor for “The Williams Method” but the joy was overshadowed by his unexpected violent reaction to a Chris Rock joke that made him get up from his seat and try to slap him live on stage at the Dolby Theater. Rock had come out to present the Oscar for best documentary and made a joke about the shaved head of Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith – who has publicly acknowledged that she suffers from alopecia – comparing her to Lieutenant O’Neil from Ridley’s film Scott.
Smith got up from his seat and went to Rock to slap him, which he managed to dodge before a speechless audience. Returning to his seat, the actor continued to yell, “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth,” he told her. After the strange incident Rock, still from the stage, tried to play down the matter and continued joking with resolving it at the party at the end of the ceremony, without the attendees or the accredited press being clear even if what they had seen was real. or simulated.
But when a few minutes later Smith went up to pick up his Oscar, he cleared the doubts. In a speech full of hesitation and inconsistencies, crying out tears and with emotion on the surface, the actor apologized to the Academy and the nominees, although at the same time he tried to justify himself without referring directly to the events that had just happened. . “Richard Williams was a brave defender of his family,” he said in what seemed like an attempt at justification and in reference to the father of the sisters whom he plays and who has earned him the Oscar.
“At this time in my life, I am overcome by what God invites me to be and do in the world,” he continued before alluding to the protective role he had with his co-stars, the two actresses who played the Williams. “In this business sometimes you have to put up with people insulting you and disrespecting you and you have to smile and say that everything is fine,” said the actor. He also mentioned that his partner Denzel Washington had warned him to be careful because “at the highest point is when the devil comes for you.”
In videos recorded by the attendees and broadcast on social networks, it was possible to see how Washington and Tyler Perry talked to him and tried to calm him down during a commercial break. Finally Smith apologized. “Life imitates art and I became a crazy father, like my character.” And he concluded: “I hope the Academy invites me again.”
The presenter Amy Schumer knew how to redirect the situation when she came out joking about how long it had taken her to take off the Spiderman costume that she wore in her last appearance: “Did I miss something?”
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