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The 2022 Oscars telecast went off the rails after a mind-boggling unscripted moment, during which actor Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock. The incident appeared to be a reaction to the comedian’s joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, looking like “G.I. Jane.” (For context, Pinkett Smith has spoken openly about having alopecia, a hair-loss condition.)
“Jada, I love ya. GI Joe 2, can’t wait to see it,” Rock said. The joke didn’t exactly land. Although he appeared first to laugh, seconds later Smith stormed onto the stage and struck Rock across the face before walking back to his seat. “Wow,” Rock replied, stunned. “Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me.”
From the audience, Smith then shouted at Rock, “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!” While the exchange was muted for almost a full 10 seconds during the U.S. broadcast, other international broadcasts revealed what was said live.
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Smith’s anger was not without impetus: Pinkett Smith has previously opened up about having alopecia on her Instagram. “Look at this line right here,” Pinkett Smith said in a video she shared in December 2021, pointing to her scalp. “Now this is going to be a little bit more difficult for me to hide, so I thought I’d just share it so y’all not asking any questions—but you know, mama’s going to put some rhinestones in there, and I’m going to make me a little crown.”
In her caption, she wrote, “Mama’s gonna have to take it down to the scalp so nobody thinks she got brain surgery or something😜 Me and this alopecia are going to be friends … period!😆”
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This was also not the first time that Rock has joked about Pinkett Smith at the Oscars. In 2016, as Oscars host for the evening, Rock took a jab at Pinkett Smith in his opening monologue. “Jada says she’s not coming. Protesting. I’m like, ‘Ain’t she on a TV show?’” he said, referring to Pinkett Smith’s decision to boycott the ceremony due to the lack of diversity in nominees, via The Hollywood Reporter. “Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. I wasn’t invited! Oh, that’s not an invitation I would turn down!”
Pinkett Smith responded to that joke to paparazzi while at the airport. “Hey, look, it comes with the territory. We gotta keep it moving,” she said. “We got a lot of stuff we gotta handle, a lot of stuff going on in our world right now. We gotta keep it moving.”
The slapping altercation, which took place while Rock was announcing the nominees for Best Documentary, caused an immediate flurry of conflicting reactions on social media, with #arrestwillsmith, #whatjusthappened, and “Good for Will” all trending on Twitter. Expect think pieces to follow.
Then, to add to the tumult, Smith was soon announced as the Best Actor winner for his role in King Richard. After accepting the statue, he first tried to laugh off the awkwardness of the moment, but broke down in tears while attempting an explanation. “Richard Williams, um, was a fierce defender of his family,” he told the audience. “I know, to do what we do, you got to be able to take abuse, you gotta be able to have people talk crazy about you, in this business you gotta be able to have people disrespecting you. And you gotta smile and you gotta pretend like that’s okay. But Richard Williams—and what I loved—Denzel said to me a few minutes ago, he said, ‘At your highest moment, be careful, because that’s when the devil comes for you.’”
He later apologized, at least to some parties, adding, “I want to apologize to the Academy; I want to apologize to all my fellow nominees…But love will make you do crazy things…I hope the Academy invites me back. Thank you.”
According to Variety, the Los Angeles Police Department was informed of what happened at the Dolby Theatre, and told the outlet, “We don’t have any details about the incident. As soon as we do, we will make them available to the public.”
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