Steve Coogan has shared his thoughts about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars, describing the incident as 'appalling arrogance.' The Middleton-born film and TV actor and comedian said the altercation was the 'epitome of all that’s twisted and horrible about Hollywood' in a conversation on BBC's Loose Ends show.
Will Smith struck comedian Chris on stage after he made a comment about Will’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith's hair loss, which is a result of the actress suffering from alopecia. Will later apologised to the Academy when he picked up the Best Actor Award for his role in King Richard.
He apologised to the comedian in a statement released the following day and on Saturday it was announced that the Hollywood star had resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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Host Clive Anderson asked Steve if he had ever encountered something similar. “First of all, I thought Hollywood showed itself at its absolute worst," he said.
"For all the kind of moral posturing that Hollywood has… I think all Hollywood’s moral posturing are always commercial decisions and if they’re moral, they’re dressed up as moral but they are always bottomline decisions."
Steve admitted he agreed with actors Rob Reiner and Jim Carrey who had both publicly condemned Will's actions.
“I think whether Chris Rock wants to press charges should be academic. In this country it's rather different," he said. "I think it’s appalling arrogance. The epitome of all that’s twisted and horrible about Hollywood. Having said that, frankly you either believe in freedom of expression or you don’t. We do have rules. You can’t go up to someone as it were and be racist into their face. You can’t hide behind freedom of expression.
“We do have ways of trying to curtail obnoxious behaviour. But freedom of expression is to be guarded at all costs.”
The Alan Partridge star, whose highly-acclaimed film roles include Stan Laurel in Stan and Ollie and journalist Martin Sixsmith in Philomena, says he encountered an 'awful' situation on stage in his early stand-up days which he had managed to diffuse.
"Years ago there was a place called the Tunnel club. I did the Tunnel Club. I was almost a right of initiation if you were on the comedy circuit in London," he recalled. "I stood on stage and there were awful obscenities and abuse and they didn't have glasses, they had plastic glasses.
"I got various plastic things lobbed at me and a chair actually thrown at me as I was trying to do nuanced stuff.
"I rescued the situation by doing Zippy and Bungle from Rainbow, just saying really. really obscene things.
"When I did that they started laughing and I got through my 20 minute set intact.
"When I got off stage they said 'oh they want an encore' and I said 'I survived and I'm never coming back."
Steve also addressed playing disgraced radio and TV presenter Jimmy Savile in the upcoming BBC series The Reckoning which will tell the story of how Savile came from a working-class background to become one of the biggest stars in television, the years of sexual abuse carried out by the warped former Top of the Pops presenter and the impact it had on his victims.
Steve, 56, said he thought 'long and hard' before taking on the role and he said the biopic has been made in consultation with Savile's survivors.
"I thought I did know how to do it. I sort of had a best guess. It's problematic, difficult, but I thought there was a way of doing it navigating the rocky waters of difficult subject matter," he explained.
He added: "My view remains it's better to talk about something than to not talk about it as a rule.
"The victims, many of whom came to vist the set, the script was written in consultation with them."
