Molly McNearney, Oscars executive producer, told Variety that she had to delete many jokes about Will Smith before the awards ceremony began.
An Oscars executive producer explains why there haven’t been more jokes about Will Smith’s slap in the face by Chris Rock in 2022. “We didn’t want to dwell too much on last year,” Molly McNearney tells Variety. “I can’t tell you how many Will Smith jokes we had to take out. We only kept the best. There were some tougher ones, but we felt it wasn’t up to us to say such a thing. It should be Chris Rock,” added the wife of Jimmy Kimmel, who was the master of the 95th ceremony.
However, it was impossible to ignore the incident. “If anyone in this room commits an act of violence at any point during the show, you get the Academy Award for Best Actor and you get to give a 19-minute speech,” Jimmy Kimmel hilariously told his audience. “Seriously, the academy has set up a crisis team. If something unpredictable or violent happens during the ceremony. Just do what you did last year: nothing. Sit down and do absolutely nothing. You can even hug the attacker. »
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Two hours into the ceremony, the American presenter asked viewers if they didn’t miss the slaps too much. After the feature film Everything Everywhere All at Once won Best Picture, Jimmy Kimmel left the stage and updated a sign that read, “Number of Oscar Nights Without Incident: 001.”
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As a reminder, Will Smith was on the Oscars stage and had slapped Chris Rock, who had just made a tacky joke, on the bald head of his alopecia-stricken wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. A few minutes later, the 54-year-old American received the Oscar for best actor for his role in “The Williams Method”.