Will Smith refused to leave Oscars after slap,
Academy says
31-3-2022
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60935900
Will Smith was asked to leave the Oscars ceremony
after hitting Chris Rock but refused, the Academy says.
The event's
organising body also said it had initiated "disciplinary proceedings"
against Smith.
Smith
slapped Rock after the comic made a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith's
shaved head, a result of the hair-loss condition alopecia.
The actor -
who won the first Oscar of his career at the ceremony - has since apologised.
In its
statement, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said: "Mr Smith
was asked to leave the ceremony and refused, [but] we also recognize we could
have handled the situation differently."
It also
announced it had "initiated disciplinary proceedings against Mr Smith for
violations of the Academy's Standards of Conduct".
These
include inappropriate physical contact, abusive or threatening behaviour, and
compromising the integrity of the Academy, it said.
The Academy
said action may be taken at its next board meeting on 18 April. That may
include "suspension, expulsion, or other sanctions," the statement
said.
It also
apologised directly to Rock, as well as nominees, guests and viewers.
Meanwhile,
Rock said he is "still processing" the incident in his first public
comments since the ceremony.
"How
was your weekend?" he jokingly asked the crowd at a stand-up show in
Boston, before saying he did not plan to address the incident at length.
"I'm
still processing what happened, so at some point I'll talk about that,"
Rock told the crowd. "It'll be serious. It'll be funny, but right now I'm
going to tell some jokes."
Reacting to
the Academy's statement, Jimmy Kimmel, who hosted the Oscars in 2017 and 18,
said on his talk show: "Usually when someone's asked to leave and refuses
to go, that's when security comes in and takes that person away.
"But
in this case, they decided to give him an Oscar and let him back on stage to
speak."
'Sends the
wrong message'
One of this
year's co-hosts, Wanda Sykes, said she found the incident "sickening"
and that it was "gross" that Smith was allowed to stay to accept his
award.
"I
physically felt ill, and I'm still a little traumatised by it," she told
talk show host Ellen DeGeneres. "And for them to let [Smith] stay in that
room and enjoy the rest of the show and accept his award, I was like, 'How
gross is this?' This sends the wrong message.
"If
you assault somebody, you get escorted out the building and that's it. But for
them to let him continue, I thought it was gross."
She also
told DeGeneres she had spoken to Rock after the show. "The first thing he
said is, 'I'm so sorry.' I was like, 'Why are you apologising?' He was like,
'It was supposed to be your night.
"'You
and Amy [Schumer] and Regina [Hall] were doing such a great job. I'm so sorry
this is now gonna be about this,'" Sykes said Rock told her.
Oscar-nominated
actress Minnie Driver said the Academy had not explained why Rock was
"abandoned by producers" during the show.
On Monday,
another former Oscars host, Whoopi Goldberg, who is one of three governors in
the Academy's acting branch, said: "We're not going to take that Oscar
from him.
"There
will be consequences, I'm sure, but I don't think that's what they're going to
do, particularly because Chris [Rock] said, 'Listen, I'm not pressing any
charges.'"
The
Hollywood Reporter editor-at-large Kim Masters told BBC Radio 4's Today
programme on Thursday that some high-profile Academy members had threatened to
resign if "pretty stringent measures" are not taken against Smith,
and there was "a lot of feeling to expel him from the Academy".
In the
past, Harvey Weinstein and Roman Polanski are among the figures to have been
expelled from the Academy, but were not stripped of the Oscars they won.
Masters
said the Academy had been "vague" in its description of what had
happened during Sunday's ceremony.
But she
added: "Obviously, if they had tried to get him to leave immediately and
he had resisted, which they said he did, that could have led to a nightmarish
scenario with a live television show.
"It
wasn't something where they could stop recording. So, you know, you have to
have a certain amount of sympathy in real time with a live show trying to
reckon with this."
The
incident on Sunday night happened just before Smith won the Oscar for best
actor, when the comedian Rock was on stage to present the award for best
documentary.
Rock made a
quip about Pinkett Smith's shaved head. The joke referred to the 1997 film GI
Jane, in which Demi Moore played the title role with a severe buzzcut.
Pinkett
Smith rolled her eyes at the comment, while Smith appeared to initially laugh
and clap his hands before he was seen on stage, walking up to Rock.
The
comedian looked stunned in the immediate aftermath of the incident, but told
the audience: "That was the greatest night in the history of
television."
In his apology,
Smith said his behaviour was "unacceptable and inexcusable".
"I
would like to publicly apologise to you, Chris," he said in a statement. "I
was out of line and I was wrong."
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário