Jimmy Kimmel
On Monday evening, late-night hosts tore into by far the most talked-about moment from the Oscars: Will Smith slapping presenter Chris Rock over a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. “Even Kanye was like, ‘you went on stage and did what at an awards show?’” said Jimmy Kimmel.
The “weirdest part” of the whole debacle, Kimmel said, was that “initially, Will Smith laughed” at Rock’s joke about Pinkett Smith being in GI Jane 2 – a dated movie reference seeming to nod at her shaved head. “But then he must have looked over and noticed that Jada was not amused and was like, ‘oh, I better do something.’ And boy did he do something.”
“In one stunning moment the night went from #OscarsSoWhat to #OscarsSoWhaaaaat?”
“No one could’ve predicted the most controversial movie of 2022 would be GI Jane, but it was,” Kimmel added. “This was the Hollywood version of your drunk uncles starting a fight, ruining the wedding, and then standing up and giving a long toast to the bride and groom.”
Rock “handled this about as well as you could possibly handle being slapped on stage at the Oscars”, Kimmel, who hosted the Oscars in 2018, continued. “He didn’t even flinch when Will slapped him. I would’ve been crying so hard.”
Shortly after the slap, Smith won the Oscar for best actor for his role as Richard Williams, father to Venus and Serena, in King Richard. “Assaulting Chris Rock and then winning the Oscar – it’s like storming out of the house after breaking up with your girlfriend, then coming back in because you forgot your keys,” Kimmel quipped.
Smith’s tearful acceptance speech “was a weird mix of what Will planned to say and what he had to say”, Kimmel said, “and it was historic in that it was the first acceptance speech in which the winner apologized to the Academy before he thanked them.
“Obviously Chris Rock did not deserve to be slapped in the face for a joke,” he concluded. “Will’s point of view was that he was defending his wife, and that’s a tough position to be in because it’s damned if you do, Ted Cruz if you don’t. And he probably wishes he had one of those Men in Black memory erasers right now.”
Stephen Colbert
“This is going to go down in Oscars history as one of the most chaotic moments of all time,” said Stephen Colbert of the slap heard round the world.
“Let me say something here as an objective observer: it’s never OK to punch a comedian,” he facetiously added. “Will Smith was offended by the joke and wanted to stand up for his wife. Fine. Challenge Chris to a duel! Or if you really want to hurt a comedian, don’t laugh. That hurts way more than a punch, I promise you.
“But this does prove one thing: Chris Rock can take a punch,” he continued, noting that Smith, whom Colbert has interviewed on the Late Show, has “a hand like a flank steak”.
“If Will wanted to hit somebody he should’ve picked somebody more appropriate like Jason Momoa or Liza Minnelli – at this point, she’s clearly unkillable,” he joked. “She’s going to live forever.”
In the aftermath, Rock declined to press charges, “but this is Hollywood, and there are rules”, Colbert said. “You can’t just storm a stage, physically assault someone on camera, and then go back to your seat. There have to be consequences! Like winning the Oscar for best actor and receiving a standing ovation then partying all night.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers looked into more consequential national drama: evidence that the wife of a supreme court justice worked with Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election. Meyers referred to Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, who in recently revealed texts to Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, repeatedly pushed to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“Do not concede,” she wrote. “It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.”
“Holy shit, that sounds like something Saruman would say in Lord of the Rings,” said Meyers.
Even more concerning, Trump had been open about involving the supreme court, where Thomas’s husband works, in overturning the election. The Trump administration sued, unsuccessfully, to prevent the National Archives from releasing records on 6 January to Congress; the only justice to side with Trump in that 8-1 ruling was Clarence Thomas.
“He sided with Trump in a case to block the release of records that could’ve potentially implicated his own wife,” Meyers said. “That is a slap in the face to the constitution.
“And even if it was to protect your wife, slapping is never OK!” he added, referring to the incident at the Oscars.
There’s also more evidence that the Texas senator Ted Cruz worked directly with Trump to “concoct a plan that came closer than widely realized to keeping him in power”, according to a new report by the Washington Post.
“Of course Ted Cruz was involved,” said Meyers. “If there’s a rotting, insidious idea somewhere, anywhere, it’s more likely than not that Ted Cruz had a role in it.”
