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Topics: US News, Celebrity, Film and TV, Will Smith, Chris Rock, Oscars
Tom Wood
Topics: US News, Celebrity, Film and TV, Will Smith, Chris Rock, Oscars
Amy Schumer has claimed she’s received abuse and trolling online for calling Will Smith’s slap on Chris Rock ‘traumatising’.
Yes, we all remember what life was like in the pre-slap times, don’t we?
So simple, so calm, we all wandered through life as if treading on clouds in lovely clear sunshine.
OK, maybe that’s overdoing it, but the slap was certainly a significant event that reverberated with a loud and tedious clang around the world.
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You can re-familiarise yourself with it here.
At the time, Oscars co-host Schumer said that the incident – which arose after Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett-Smith’s alopecia – was traumatising. And now, she claims she’s been trolled online for her reaction.
The 40-year-old told radio DJ Howard Stern: “People made fun of me for saying that was traumatising, but I don’t think it was traumatising for me. I think it was traumatising for all of us.”
She even got some threats afterwards.
Schumer added: "They were so bad the Secret Service reached out to me about that bit.
“I was like, ‘I think you have the wrong number. It’s Amy, not Will.’ The misogyny is unbelievable."
However, in the immediate aftermath of the slap Schumer wrote on Instagram – before later deleting – that she was personally traumatised by the whole thing.
She said: “Still triggered and traumatised. I love my friend @chrisrock and believe he handled it like a pro.
“Stayed up there and gave an Oscar to his friend @questlove and the whole thing was so disturbing.”
She’s definitely right about one thing – Chris Rock did wear it pretty well.
Confronted by the not-insignificant figure of Smith invading the stage to clip him across the mush, he then laughed it off and even managed to crack wise about it whilst Smith shouted at him to ‘keep [his] wife’s name out of [his] f***ing mouth’ on a couple of occasions.
The star of Life After Beth went on to discuss the incident further, stating: “It was just a f***ing bummer.
“All I can say is that it was really sad, and I think it says so much about toxic masculinity.”
To be fair, she’s probably got a point there, as well.
Whilst Schumer might have rowed back upstream on her comments about trauma, it seems she wasn’t the only person to have that initial reaction.
Fellow Academy Awards host Wanda Sykes also spoke afterwards about having been really shaken by the slap.
The 58-year-old told talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres: “I just felt so awful for my friend Chris,
“And it was sickening. … I physically felt ill, and I’m still a little traumatised by it.”
Will Smith has since apologised to the Academy, as well as to Rock publicly.