Producer of the Academy Awards 2023 explained how the award show would address Will Smith’s now infamous slap. At last year’s Oscars 2022, Smith got up from the audience and slapped host Chris Rock after he joked that Jada Pinkett Smith had shaved her head after being diagnosed with hair loss. That evening, Smith accepted the award for Best Actor and used his speech to apologize to the Academy and other nominees. The next day, Smith will publicly apologize to Locke via social media.
At a press conference (via type), Oscar executive producer Molly McNearney said that this year’s awards ceremony will jokingly acknowledge the slap, but that the show won’t be so focused on the incident. While McNearney says there’s an opportunity to mitigate the incident, the Academy doesn’t want the 2023 Oscars to focus solely on the previous year and its scandals. However, since Smith resigned from the academy after the slap, it was impossible to hide it in this year’s speech. Read McNearney’s full review below:
“We’ll admit it and then we’ll move on. We don’t want this year to be like last year. It’s certainly something we can and will do humorously.”
How a Smith-Rock slap affects the Oscars
While the Oscars simply wanted to acknowledge the slap, the Oscars creative team acknowledged that major changes had to be made to this year’s ceremony after last year’s events. Smith won Best Actor in 2022, meaning he would normally award the winner in 2023. However, that won’t be the case as Smith is no longer a member of the Welding Institute. and was banned from attending the Oscars for 10 years. Instead, teams have to get creative, says host Ricky Kirshner: “We’ve rethought the show, we have hosts that fit the genre“
In addition to changing the host lineup for the 2023 Oscars, Smith-Rock’s slap also changed the way the Oscars were held as a live televised event. Kirshner said that since last year, Oscar now has a complete crisis team that will be responsible for responding to any unexpected incidents that arise during the live broadcast. Kirshner says that while he hopes a crisis team will no longer be needed in the future, having a crisis team will ensure that any crisis is handled in a professional and timely manner. .
While Smith’s slap isn’t the first shocking incident at a major televised event, the incident has become synonymous with the 2022 Oscars and has certainly changed viewers’ expectations about the future of the program. Now, with a crisis team in place, the Academy can better handle emergencies like a slap forward. Although it remains to be seen what the Oscars look like Will joke about it, but many are relieved that the infamous slap will be addressed publicly.
Source: Diversity