Chris Rock–Will Smith slapping incident

• 1. Introduction

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  The slapping incident between Chris Rock and Will Smith unfolded live at the 94th Academy Awards, and one witness waiting offstage captured the room's disbelief in a single sentence. Kevin Costner, who stood ready to present the award for Best Director, said, "Oh, that was real." On the 27th of March 2022, Will Smith, a nominee for Best Actor that night, left his seat, crossed the stage, and slapped presenter Chris Rock across the face. Many people assumed they were watching a prearranged skit. They were wrong, and the doubt only cleared when Smith began shouting from the audience. This documentary asks what Rock said to provoke the blow. It asks why a man who struck a presenter was still in the building when his own award was announced. It asks how an institution with strict standards of conduct chose to respond. And it asks why footage of the moment travelled so far, and what the world made of it afterward.

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• 2. Old Connections

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  Jada Pinkett Smith, born Jada Pinkett, rose to fame in 1991 through her role in the television show A Different World. In 1994 she met Will Smith on the set of his show, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The two married in 1997, and she took the name Jada Pinkett Smith.

  Her history with Chris Rock was long and not always friendly. The pair worked together on the Madagascar films. In 1997, on his late-night talk show The Chris Rock Show, Rock had commented on her participation in the Million Woman March. Rock also hosted the Oscars twice. In 2016, several actors, Pinkett Smith among them, boycotted that ceremony because of the lack of African-American nominees. Rock answered in his opening monologue with a joke: "Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna's panties. I wasn't invited."

  In 2018, on her talk show Red Table Talk, Pinkett Smith revealed that she had been losing her hair, possibly because of stress. She was diagnosed with alopecia areata, and in July 2021 she began shaving her head completely.

  By the 8th of February 2022, Will Smith had been nominated for an Academy Award for his acting in the film King Richard. The Academy also named Rock among the presenters for the 94th ceremony. A nominee, his wife's visible condition, and a presenter with a long record of jokes about her were now set to share one room.

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• 3. The Joke and the Slap

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  Rock was presenting the nominees for Best Documentary Feature, reading a short monologue mostly from a teleprompter, when he turned his attention to the front rows. Smith and Pinkett Smith sat together there.

  The next line was not in the script. Academy sources later confirmed that Rock ad-libbed it. He compared Pinkett Smith's shaved head to the look of Demi Moore's character in the 1997 film G.I. Jane. His words were: "Jada, I love you. G.I. Jane 2, can't wait to see it, all right?"

  Much of the audience laughed, Smith included. Pinkett Smith rolled her eyes in annoyance. Rock began to move on, then noticed Smith walking toward him and said "uh oh." He followed with the name "Richard," a nod to Smith's title role in King Richard.

  Smith strode across the stage and slapped Rock on the left cheek. He then turned and walked back to his seat. Rock was still laughing, and he remarked that Smith had just smacked him. The audience laughed again.

  The laughter stopped when Smith, visibly upset, shouted from his seat for Rock to keep his wife's name out of his mouth, using profanity. The audience gasped. Rock answered, "Wow, dude!" and then, "It was a G.I. Jane joke." Smith repeated the demand more slowly, his voice rising.

  Rock replied, "I'm going to, okay?" and called it the "greatest night in the history of television." Then he turned back to his task and finished presenting the documentary category without further interruption. Many observers noted that a physical attack clashed with the calm public image Smith had built over three decades. In many countries, broadcasters muted his profanity, so viewers at home heard a different show from the one in the hall.

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• 4. The Rest of the Night

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  Questlove and the producers David Dinerstein, Robert Fyvolent, and Joseph Patel walked onto the stage right after the incident to accept the award for Best Documentary Feature, won by Summer of Soul. Some commenters felt the slap overshadowed their win. Gabrielle Ulubay of Marie Claire wrote that the film and Questlove's tribute to his parents deserved full attention, yet the world was busy searching Twitter.

  Backstage, a reporter asked Questlove about the incident, and he declined: "I'm not talking about that tonight, this is about the Harlem Cultural Festival." The next night, on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, he explained that he had missed the slap. He had been using Transcendental Meditation to calm his anxiety before the winner was called. He said he understood what happened "maybe three seconds before I spoke words."

  Smith, meanwhile, stayed. The stunned audience kept expecting some official word from the stage, and people in the mezzanine stood up from time to time to peer over the balcony. No such word came, and the show carried on without hosts.

  Within forty minutes, Smith was handed the Best Actor award for playing Richard Williams in King Richard. His emotional speech dwelt on divine justification and his urge to protect the people around him. "Love will make you do crazy things," he said. He apologized to the Academy, to the other nominees, and to Venus and Serena, who were in the hall. He did not apologize to Rock in that speech. The live audience gave him two standing ovations.

  Anthony Hopkins, presenting Best Actress, addressed the matter in his own remarks: "Will Smith said it all. What more can be said? Let's have peace and love and quiet."

  The Academy later said Smith was asked to leave the ceremony and refused. Others who were present in the hall denied that anyone asked him, either directly or through a representative. Behind the scenes, Academy leaders and ceremony producer Will Packer disagreed over whether he should stay, and nothing was done. Variety reported that Packer "was the key to Smith remaining in his seat." Packer opposed removing Smith because he did not believe Rock would agree.

  After the show, winners were advised to answer questions only about their work. Officers of the LAPD met with Packer, who later recalled that they were prepared to arrest Smith for battery. Rock repeatedly declined to press charges.

  Early the next morning, Smith's son Jaden tweeted, "And that's how we do it!" Many celebrities reacted with strong disapproval. Netflix then canceled a planned sequel to Smith's 2017 urban fantasy action film Bright, mainly because of the negative publicity.

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• 5. The Academy's Verdict

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  On the 28th of March, the Academy's 42-member Board of Governors announced a formal review, set for the 30th. AMPAS President David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson told members by email.

  The following day, Smith started a six-minute Zoom call with Rubin and Hudson to apologize. The call was never mentioned at the review, and the board did not know about it while it discussed discipline. When the board learned of it, one participant called the lack of transparency suspicious and a sign of weak leadership.

  The board charged Smith with "violations of the Academy's standards of conduct, including inappropriate physical contact, abusive or threatening behavior, and compromising the integrity of the Academy." It gave him fifteen days to reply in writing before a vote on suspension, expulsion, or other sanctions. The Academy also conceded that it "could have handled the situation differently." Numerous members argued that a suspension was the minimum, pointing to standards of conduct adopted eight weeks after the abuse by Harvey Weinstein came to light.

  Expulsion was rare. Before 2004, the Academy had never expelled a member. That year the board voted unanimously to remove actor Carmine Caridi for sharing promotional copies of films that were later distributed widely. Weinstein, Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby, and cinematographer Adam Kimmel were later expelled for sexual crimes.

  Smith got ahead of the vote and resigned on Friday, the 1st of April 2022. The Academy told him that expulsion for a decade or more was likely, and it kept its disciplinary process going to settle matters his resignation left open. Those included whether he could keep his Best Actor Oscar, be invited back by other members, or be considered for future nominations. A meeting planned for the 18th of April was moved up to the 8th. Rubin wrote that suspension or expulsion were no longer possible and that a timely resolution served everyone.

  At that meeting, the board barred Smith from the Oscars and every other Academy event for ten years. NBC News obtained a letter signed by Rubin and Hudson saying he "shall not be permitted to attend any Academy events or programs, in person or virtually." Smith replied, "I accept and respect the Academy's decision."

  The consequences reached his work. In June 2020, Smith had been announced as the star of Emancipation, directed by Antoine Fuqua, playing Peter, a runaway slave who outwits hunters and the Louisiana swamp on a journey to the Union army. Apple Studios reportedly paid about US$120 million for the film, outbidding several other studios. By May 2022, its release had been pushed back because of production issues, the controversy, and a crowded Apple release schedule. It reached select theaters on the 2nd of December 2022 and Apple TV+ a week later. Reviews were mixed, and its limited run earned a modest $3,000 to $4,000 per location.

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• 6. Apologies and Silence

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  The day after the ceremony, Smith posted a formal apology on Instagram and Facebook. He called his behavior "unacceptable" and "inexcusable" and spoke to Rock directly: "I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris. I was out of line and I was wrong. I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be."

  Three days after the incident, Rock mentioned it for the first time, briefly, at a comedy show. He said he was still processing what happened and promised to discuss it someday. He added that Smith had not contacted him personally and that they had not spoken since the ceremony. Fact-checkers debunked social media claims that Rock had apologized.

  On the 29th of July, Smith posted a YouTube video. In it he apologized to Rock, to Rock's mother, to Rock's brother Tony, to Questlove, to the other Oscar winners, and to his wife Jada. He said he was "deeply remorseful."

  His first public interview came on the 29th of November 2022, on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Asked to reflect, Smith said, "That was a horrific night, as you could imagine. There's many nuances and complexities to it, but at the end of the day, I just lost it. I guess what I would say is you just never know what someone's going through."

  Rock broke his own silence in March 2023, in his Netflix stand-up special Selective Outrage, which contained numerous jokes about the incident.

  In October 2023, Jada Pinkett Smith published her memoir Worthy, which revealed that she and her husband had been separated since 2016. She called the disclosure a "weight off my shoulders." Of the Oscars night, she wrote, "it's so interesting how such an intense event can bring you closer together." In a 2023 Parade interview, she said of that moment, "oh snap, we are just made for this journey together."

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• 7. Photographs and Memes

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  Brian Snyder, a Reuters photojournalist working in the photographer pool in the projection booth, took the picture of Smith striking Rock. His photos are sent automatically to his editors, so he did not grasp the image's reach until after the ceremony. It went viral, ran in news stories, and was turned into memes. Several outlets profiled him, including the photography site PetaPixel, and one speculated that he might win the World Press Photo of the Year.

  In the United States, the network ABC muted both men's profanity, citing federal censorship rules. Many international broadcasters did not. An uncensored clip from the Australian broadcast on the Seven Network was posted to YouTube by The Guardian and passed 50 million views within 24 hours.

  On the 31st of March, smartphone footage from an audience member's angle on the Smiths' table appeared. It seems to show Pinkett Smith unamused and rolling her eyes during the joke, then apparently laughing when Rock said Smith had just smacked him.

  Some commentators suspected a publicity stunt, partly because ratings had been sliding in recent years. David Griner of Adweek tweeted that the slow walk, the open-handed slap, and the lack of security "feels absolutely staged for publicity." A digitally altered image that seemed to show a cheek pad on Rock fueled the rumor, and it was debunked. Academy sources said the incident was not planned.

  Shock gradually turned into satire. Media outlets called it "the slap heard around the world." Others used the names "Slapgate" and "The Slappening." Many memes drew on the DreamWorks Animation films Shark Tale, from 2004, in which Smith voiced Oscar, and Madagascar, from 2005, in which Rock and Pinkett Smith played Marty and Gloria. An artist, Eme Freethinker, worked the photo into a mural on a surviving section of the Berlin Wall in Mauerpark.

  On Saturday Night Live, Colin Jost mocked the Academy's handling of the matter by asking, "So now we just ask the victim right after they get hit in the head?"

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• 8. Verdicts and Debates

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  A YouGov poll taken the day after the ceremony found that 61 percent of Americans called Smith's actions unacceptable, while 22 percent called them acceptable. The Federal Communications Commission received 66 complaints. SAG-AFTRA, the actors' union, issued a statement that "Violence or physical abuse in the workplace is never appropriate."

  Comedians reacted in many ways. Jim Carrey told CBS Mornings, "You do not have the right to walk up on stage and smack somebody in the face because they said words," and said he would have sued Smith for US$200 million in Rock's position. Gilbert Gottfried's last social media post before he died on the 12th of April asked, "Which is the worst crime? Chris Rock being physically assaulted or Chris Rock telling a joke?" Howie Mandel feared the slap marked "the beginning of the end for comedy." Comedy clubs across the United States, including Stand Up NY and Carolines on Broadway, announced more security, though the owner of the Comedy Cellar doubted it would inspire copycats.

  At the next Oscars, host Jimmy Kimmel displayed a sign reading "Number of Oscars telecast without incident" and raised the counter to "1." Five weeks after the slap, Dave Chappelle was tackled onstage by an armed audience member. Rock stepped out to ask, "Was that Will Smith?"

  Politicians weighed in as well. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he "can understand" Smith's reasons, but "that's not how you roll." Rishi Sunak, then British Chancellor of the Exchequer, joked, "At least I didn't get up and slap anybody." Representative Ayanna Pressley, who has alopecia areata, said the condition is "not a line in a joke."

  Legal experts split over charges. Former prosecutor Alan Jackson thought charges unlikely if Rock did not take part. Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani said "pressing charges" is a misconception, because the decision belongs to the Los Angeles City Attorney's office. Law professor Laurie Levenson judged the case too minor to be a priority, and experts consulted by the Associated Press agreed that charges were unlikely.

  Scholars read the event as a cultural symptom. Shaun Harper of the University of Southern California said, "Will Smith is 53 years old, which confirms that toxic masculinity is not about immaturity." Monica Hesse of The Washington Post called it a misguided attempt at chivalry. Jenny Singer of Glamour contrasted the swift ban on Smith with the Academy's forty-year wait to expel Roman Polanski, who fled sentencing in 1978.

  The money story was lopsided. Washington University professors Tim Solberg and Glenn MacDonald doubted either star would lose significant earnings. Rock's tour sold out, one secondary seller reported a 641 percent increase, and some tickets were auctioned for more than US$1,700. The illness at the center of the joke also gained attention. Google searches for alopecia rose by 600 percent.

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