Will Smith joked that “you can’t invite people from Philly nowhere” shortly after slapping Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars, it has emerged.
During Sunday (27 March) night’s ceremony, Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, while he was presenting an award.
“Jada, I love you. GI Jane 2, can’t wait to see you,” Rock said, in seeming reference to Pinkett Smith’s shaved head. Last year, Pinkett Smith announced she had shaved her head after being diagnosed with alopecia.
Smith walked onto the stage and hit Rock, before returning to his seat and shouting: “Keep my wife’s name out your f***ing mouth.”
Before the ceremony began, Smith shared a clip to Instagram of him and Pinkett Smith getting ready for the event, followed by a series of goofy selfies of the pair.
“Me ‘n @jadapinkettsmith got all dressed up to choose chaos,” he captioned it.
Three hours later, just after the hit was thrown, Smith added a comment to his own post.
“You can’t invite people from Philly or Baltimore nowhere!!” he wrote.
Smith took home his first Academy Award for Best Actor for King Richard just 15 minutes after the altercation, during which he revealed what Denzel Washington said to him immediately afterwards.
“I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people,” Smith said.
“I know, to do what we do, we’ve gotta be able to take abuse. You’ve gotta be able to have people talk crazy about you. In this business, you’ve gotta be able to have people disrespecting you. You’ve gotta smile and pretend that that’s okay.”
He then revealed that Washington told him: “‘In your highest moments, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you’”.
Find the full list of 2022 Oscar winners here. See the latest updates and reactions from the dramatic ceremony here, and read about the biggest talking points here.
