In any other year, the spectacle of a gaunt and grizzled Will Smith headlining a $120 million slavery epic – in which the Hollywood superstar also manages to wrestle an alligator – would feel like an event, a sure-fire swing at Oscars glory come March. But this, of course, has been no ordinary year for the newly minted best actor winner.
By the time the media cycle around The Slap had run its course – rarely has there been so much tiresome, clueless moralising from armchair psychologists – Smith's carefully curated, decades-in-the-making public persona had all but unravelled.
He was expelled from the Academy, and has spent the last nine months apologising in exile.
