The Academy Awards’ chief exec has responded to Chris Rock’s controversial new Netflix special, in which he addresses THAT moment.
Rock’s new show Selective Outrage sees him crack jokes about everyone from the Duchess of Sussex to the Kardashians, but there was also something else that was inevitably going to be on the agenda:
That’s right, he uses the stage to address the now-infamous Oscar moment when he got a slap across the face after making a joke about Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith.
He jokes: "Yes it happened, I got smacked. Like a year ago f**king last week I got smacked at the f**king Oscars by this motherf**ker.
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"And people are like, ‘Did it hurt?’ It still hurts. I’ve got [Will Smith’s song] ‘Summertime’ ringing in my ears."
But he says he’s ‘not a victim’, continuing: “You will never see me on Oprah or Gayle [King] crying. You will never see it, never going to happen.
"‘I couldn’t believe it and I love Men in Black,’ no, it’s never going to happen. F**k that s**t. I took that hit like [former boxer Manny] Pacquiao."
He adds: “Did it hurt? Yeah motherf**ker, it hurt.”
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Ahead of this year’s Oscars – which take place on Sunday 12 March – Academy CEO Bill Kramer has responded to Rock’s comments, saying they’re simply focusing on the future.
Kramer told Deadline: “I think what’s important for us is that we’re moving forward.
“At the Nominees' Luncheon... Janet Yang very clearly owned that we, as an Academy, have to be better prepared and have to be much more nimble and clear in our response to things.
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“I really want to focus on that.”
He added: “I think it’s great that Chris spoke his truth. I can’t speak to the timing of that, but we are ready to move forward.”
Kramer had also previously confirmed a ‘crisis team’ would be in place at this year’s event to help manage any ‘potential surprises’.
He told Time magazine: "We’ve run many scenarios. So it is our hope that we will be prepared for anything that we may not anticipate right now but that we’re planning for just in case it does happen.
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"These crisis plans — the crisis communication teams and structures we have in place — allow us to say this is the group that we have to gather very quickly. This is how we all come together. This is the spokesperson. This will be the statement.
“And obviously depending on the specifics of the crisis, and let’s hope something doesn’t happen and we never have to use these, but we already have frameworks in place that we can modify."
Topics: Film and TV, Chris Rock, Oscars, Celebrity
Jess Hardiman