Who was the actor least deserving of an Academy Award?

Yeah, right: highly questionable after you hit someone just for a joke – and at an awards show where such teasing is fairly commonplace , at that! What’s more: this analogy reminded many domestic violence survivors of the language their abusers used to repackage their emotional and physical abuse as love , so he’s not fooling anyone with those crocodile tears in the picture above, especially given that he apologized to the Academy and the other winners – whose wins were sadly overshadowed by the event – and nominees in his speech, but not to Chris Rock until the following day…

Even three years after it happened, how can any of us forget the 2022 Oscar moment that took everyone by surprise, during which Smith deliberately came up to comedian and presenter Chris Rock and slapped him right across the face – mind you, in front of a whole crowd and on live television (hence its nickname “The Slap heard around the world”)! –, all because Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and her shaved head… And as we all know, after a short instant in which everyone in attendance assumed this was pre-arranged comedy – Jada herself claimed during interviews that she initially thought it was “a skit” –, it only got worse, with Smith returning to his seat and twice shouting profanity at Rock as seen in the video below:

Other than the fact that unlike what so many – and I’m definitely talking about the racist, Black-hating white supremacists – are stubborn enough to believe, it had nothing to do whatsoever with race or black people behavior. As a matter of fact, there were not only white people who condemned Smith’s actions, because not all African-Americans, from all categories, supported him on this. For example: fellow actor Martin Lawrence, Smith’s co-star in the Bad Boys franchise, weighed in on the controversial moment by saying that Chris Rock didn’t deserve to be slapped at all ; and director Roger Ross Williams, a Black member of the Academy’s board of governors, told The Hollywood Reporter that the incident upset him, adding:

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Of course, what was even more shocking was the fact that the Academy did not take any immediate actions on the matter, thus allowing Smith to remain in the ceremony and in subsequent celebrations, before eventually presenting him the Award for Best Actor for his role as tennis coach Richard Williams in the 2021 biographical film King Richard. And that’s when the atmosphere went more tense, with Smith receiving a standing ovation and giving his speech for well over the time allotted for Oscar recipients, during which he tearfully proclaimed, among other things, divine justification for his actions and wanting be “a vessel of love”…

What about Will Smith?

What else can be said about this controversial event that hasn’t been said yet? Other than the fact that, according to experts, Will Smith’s body language revealed that he wasn’t completely sincere in addressing it neither in his apology video on July 2022 (three months after the smack happened!), nor during his interview with presenter Trevor Noah of The Daily Show on November of that same year. Watch the two vids above and below and see what the experts are talking about.

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It’s clear as day: even though Will Smith is now witnessing a career recovery, the shadow of the infamous Oscar Slap still lingers over his public image , and that’s why I’m one of many to feel that he didn’t deserve his Oscar win.

Chris Rock only took one slap at the Oscars... but I took a verbal slap from Will Smith every day. And sometimes I think the emotional injuries are just as deep, if not deeper, than physical ones. That movie was meant to be a huge stepping stone in my career, but for me it ended up being a nightmare because of all the sickening abuse I got from Smith. He was evil to me but nice to everyone else. It was sort of like Jekyll and Hyde .

I was in tears. It reinforces stereotypes about Black people and it just hurts me .

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Other than the fact that while many people said that this couldn’t be the Will Smith they thought knowing – i.e. the calm, fun-loving, supportive guy who developed a positive public image over the years –, others weren’t actually surprised, as they themselves were allegedly at the receiving end of his behavior and rage. One of them was comedian Paul Rodriguez, who acted alongside Smith in the 2001 biopic Ali, and claimed to have been constantly “bullied and humiliated” by the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air actor, telling The Sun:

You know, come to think of it: from rewatching the pre-slap scene, that joke was innocent and funny by itself, with clearly no malicious intentions (I’m saying this and I’m not really a fan of Chris Rock!), even towards someone whose shaved head resulted from alopecia areata – and based on thorough research, alopecia is no serious medical condition, one can have it and still be in very good health as is the case with Jada Pinkett-Smith. Plus, check out the look of confusion on Lupita Nyong’o’s face at 0:53, clearly not sure about how to respond nor wrapping her head around what’s going on…

Other than the fact that both Smith and Rock should be burying the hatchet by now, but they didn’t, with the former reportedly refusing to forgive the latter for “ruining his life” and still harboring negative sentiments towards the comedian’s “smug attitude” , to the extent of enjoying the recent controversies surrounding Rock – for example: when the latter stormed out of a Christmas party hosted by billionaire Anthony Pratt on December 2024, reportedly after spotting something in the audience that upset him, and made a controversial joke about Mexicans –; and simultaneously, after supporting Rock at first, people are now having enough of his continued references to the incident on his comedy shows – one of which was his 2023 Netflix special Selective Outrage, where he completely roasted the Smiths –, with some feeling that he should accept Smith’s apology and move on, and others acknowledging that his feud with the Smiths goes way back, long before 2022 .

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Truly, in a world that goes through turmoil after turmoil every year, and where there are far more horrendous problems than a simple joke at the Academy Awards, is it not about time for these two to make amends once and for all? If that joke really was hurtful – and yet, footage shows that Smith initially laughed at it before somehow losing his temper –, then why did Smith choose to resort to violence rather than calmly work it out with Rock? If the Men in Black star’s behavior really was the result of years of “bottled” rage as he claimed, why did he feel compelled to get it out on a stand-up comedian whose job is to make jokes? Why did he had to ruin his big night – one that he has been looking forward to for decades – and the night of others with a slap for all to see? Does the bad blood between the two have to endure?

Other than the fact that this whole “defending the wife’s honor” thing was for nothing, because Jada Pinkett-Smith, the very subject of the mascarade, stated a year later that she and Will have actually been separated since 2016 , some six years prior to the event! But the pair never publicly shared this news earlier, whether amid the Slap or long before that, when they opened up about her adulterous affair with singer August Alsina – or rather, her “entanglement” as she put it on her show Red Table talk in 2020; if only the Smiths kept their complicated private lives to themselves…