In what quickly became the bombshell of the ceremony, Smith punched Rock in the face after the comic made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. “Jada, I’m looking forward to GI Jane 2,” Rock said in an apparent reference to her shaved hair, which is the result of alopecia areata. Smith took the stage and hit Rock before returning to his seat, shouting, “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth.” Evaristo, the Booker Prize-winning author, wrote on Twitter: “What a thing to wake up to. Only the fifth black man in almost 100 years to win an Academy Award for Best Actor and the first in 16 years to use violence instead of using the power of words to kill Chris Rock. Then he claims that God and love made him do it “. The other four blacks who have won Oscars for Best Actor are Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier, Jamie Foxx and Forrest Whitaker. Shortly after the incident, Smith won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Richard Williams as King Richard, and used his speech to apologize, saying he wanted to be “a container of love.” “I want to apologize to the Academy. “I want to apologize to all my candidates,” he said. “Art imitates life. I look like the crazy father, as they said about Richard Williams. “But love will make you do crazy things.” Since then, the moment has caused a frenzy of responses, from happy memes to anger and anxiety. Last Samurai producer Marshall Herskovitz called on the Academy to take disciplinary action against Smith, while actress Mia Farrow wrote on Twitter: “It was just a joke.” “The ‘utensils of love’ I met or admired never acted violently against another human being,” actor Carrie Elgus wrote on Twitter. In the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer said Smith’s actions at the Oscars fell on the “wrong side of the line”. The Labor leader said: “Of course there are circumstances and anyone who offends family members is aroused by something very emotional in all of us. “But on the other hand, going up and hitting someone this way is wrong, I’m afraid. It was the Oscars, there were all the cameras there, millions of people were watching.” “Let me tell you something: it’s a very bad practice to go on stage and physically attack a comedian,” Katie Griffin wrote on Twitter. “Now we all have to worry about who the next Will Smith wants to be in comedy clubs and theaters.” While many were horrified by Smith’s behavior, citing it as an example of normalization of violence, they also said that Rock’s comments went too far, especially after a previous gag he made about Pinkett Smith during the 2016 Oscars. “Violence is not okay. “Attack is never the answer,” actress Sophia Bush wrote on Twitter. “Also? This is the 2nd time Chris has made fun of Jada at the Oscars and tonight he fell after her alopecia. Hitting someone’s autoimmune disease is wrong. Doing it on purpose is hard. They both need a breath. ». Nadhim Zahawi said Rock made a “mistake” when he made a joke about Pinkett Smith. “Violence is never the answer to any problem-solving, as Will Smith acknowledged in this tearful apology,” said the education secretary. “I think we also need to remember – and I’m the education secretary – that sometimes even a joke can actually be under the belt. “When a joke is about someone’s wife and her illness – she has alopecia – it is wrong.” U.S. lawmaker Ayanna Pressley, who was also outspoken about alopecia, wrote on Twitter and deleted a defense of Smith. “Nation alopecia, get up! Thank you Will Smith. “Shout out to all the husbands who defend their wives who live with alopecia in the face of daily ignorance and insults,” the deleted tweet read. Smith’s 23-year-old son, Jaden Smith, wrote on Twitter: “And so we do.” The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hosts the Oscars, tweeted that it “does not condone violence of any kind,” while the Los Angeles Police Department told Variety that Rock had “refused to file a police report.”
