Almost a year after the slap was heard around the world, 2022 Best Actor Oscar winner Will Smith has taken to TikTok to get cheeky and move on.
In a duet video posted Tuesday, Smith responds to TikToker Sam Rossi aka @missmoneyworking addressing “an absolutely insane exercise” that will “change your life.” Rossi suggests that anyone who wants to come clean with themselves should pick up an inanimate object and ask it what it thinks of you. The Idea: Your intuition will “speak” to you as the object, revealing something that you as yourself may not be comfortable enough saying. So, at the end of the video, Smith tries the experiment… with his Oscar statuette.
“This has got to be the hardest flex of 2023,” writes one commenter.
It’s a fun part — and a nod to an unprecedented public rehabilitation journey with no true ending.
Last March, just before Smith received an Oscar for his work in King Richard, the host of the ceremony, Chris Rock, hurled an insult at Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith, sparking a blast in the televised affair. “Keep my wife’s name out of your friggin’ mouth!” Smith exclaimed from his seat before jumping up and taking the stage, giving Rock a smack in front of a crowd of 16.6 million. Smith immediately responded to the altercation in his acceptance speech and spent the following months repairing the damage, a journey that eventually led him to resign from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. AMPAS didn’t stop there: the organization determined that the 94th Academy Awards “had been overshadowed by the unacceptable and harmful behavior we saw Mr. Smith exhibit on stage,” and banned Smith from the Oscars for 10 years -Awards.
Smith, who before the slap and Oscar win had gone to great lengths to rake in traditional Hollywood fame for social media fame on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and other platform properties, stepped out of the limelight not very long after the kerfuffle . As many had called it, after taking a deep breath, Smith was on the apology tour as of the summer of 2022. Last July, he released a YouTube apology video that would make the Try Guys proud, noting that he “tried to be remorseful without being ashamed of myself.” I’m human and I made a mistake and […] I’m trying not to think of myself as a piece of shit.” Smith returned to social media through August with goofy videos poking fun at his newly deconstructed persona.
Unfortunately for Smith, there was a deadline for his brand realignment: Later in the year, the actor was set to helm Emancipation, a historical drama from Training Day director Antoine Fuqua about a runaway slave’s escape to freedom. Produced by Apple and Smiths Westbrook Studios, the film was considered a potential Oscar contender – or would have been if its lead role hadn’t just been banned from the Oscars. Though he was actually up for another Best Actor award, Hollywood pundits spent the fall wondering if Smith would be able to get out of the slap hole in time to plead for a nomination. Smith too.
“I definitely lose a few winks every night because I think I could have possibly punished my team,” the actor told Entertainment Weekly in a November interview. “But I will do whatever it takes to make sure everyone is seen in the light they deserve.”
Later that month, with Oscar hype season in full swing, Smith joined Trevor Noah on the Daily Show to discuss the film – and revisit the slap in the face that continued to define its existence.
“That was a horrible night, as you can imagine,” Smith told Noah. “There are many nuances and complexities. But at the end of the day I just lost it, you know? I guess I’d just say, you never know what someone’s going through […] I went through something that night, you know? Not that that would justify my behavior at all.”
Later in the interview, Smith unpacked a bit of the psychology behind the outburst, saying that the man we saw take the stage and hit Chris Rock was “the little boy who watched his father hit his mother, Do you know? It all just bubbled up at that moment. That’s not who I want to be.”
The 95th Academy Awards will be presented on March 12, 2023. Smith is not among the Best Actor nominees and will not be attending the event due to his Academy ban. But the conversation about the slap, or maybe it’s the cultural fallout of a psychologically explosive moment, continues. Data miners endlessly debate whether Smith’s celebrity stocks have really fallen; Guest Comments Argue Why Chris Rock Deserved To Be Slapped; the Brits try to joke at Smith’s expense, much to the chagrin of society (and you’d better believe someone at the Oscars will “go” during the show). The slap is here to stay, and Smith, a movie star on a never-ending apology spree and a social creator in need of content, knows it.