Will Smith slaps Chris Rock at the Oscars over joke about Jada Pinkett Smith

March 27, 2022 Andrew Buss Academy Awards, Chris Rock, News

Chris Rock / Will Smith Slap

Chris Rock was one of the presenters at the Academy Awards tonight. During his presenter speech, he made a crack about Jada Pinkett Smith, who was in the audience. He talked about how he was looking forward to seeing her in G.I. Jane 2. This was a crack about her alopecia.

While Pinkett seemed clearly pissed off immediately following the joke, her husband Will Smith was laughing about it. But that was quickly followed by Smith walking up onstage, and slapped Rock directly in the mouth. It was immediately followed by Smith shouting out “Keep my wife’s name out of your f*cking mouth!” Of course, this was censored for TV.

#Oscars viewers were left wondering 'what just happened' after Will Smith hit Chris Rock following a joke the comedian made of Jada Pinkett Smith's hair loss — watch the moment pic.twitter.com/0tEMHPHdU4

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) March 28, 2022

The moment has everyone (including us) wondering whether or not it was staged. Something tells us that it wouldn’t be, as it was not the first time there was beef between Pinkett Smith and Rock surrounding the Oscars.

Back in 2016, she called on Rock to boycott the Oscars, which he was hosting that year, as a result of the #OscarsSoWhite movement. This was a year where there were no black nominees. Rock in turn addressed it during the show. He quipped “Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. I wasn’t invited!!”

Here’s an uncensored version of the incident from a Japanese TV feed.