Did Will Smith Really Slap Chris Rock?

For those of you who watched the Oscars 2022 tonight, you got lucky to see the action going down live.

For the rest of us, our social media news feeds were fraught with videos and memes of Will Smith hitting Chris Rock on live television after yelling, “Keep my wife’s name out of your f**ing mouth!”

Aaaaand, immediately, it got awkward.

Chris Rock was trying to play it off and well, yeah, it was awkward. But, he sure did a fine job, smiling and saying, “That was a greatest night in the history of television.”

Immediately, I searched the web trying to figure out what the feud between the two were. It turns out that Jada Pinkett Smith had alopecia, a hair loss disease that contributed to her hair loss. And therefore, she was rocking a shaved hair cut.

But what was interesting was that Will Smith was originally laughing at Chris Rock’s joke, but you can see Jada Pinkett Smith’s face of disapproval. Which was immediately followed by Will Smith walking up to the stage and assaulting Chris Rock.

However, 20 minutes later, Will Smith received an Oscar for Best Actor for his role of Richard in King Richard. He shared an emotional and heartfelt speech of what his role taught him and how God had called him to be a vessel of love.

It was a contradictory moment. An unscripted and unexpected moment between the two celebrities, ending in an awkward moment of Will Smith being awarded an Oscar thereafter.

I feel like Will Smith was definitely going through a phase of different realizations. The way I interpreted it was that remnants of the soul searching and epiphanies of the character Will Smith was playing had left him stuck in typecasting; where the actor becomes the character that they play and struggle to get out of character. Perhaps he had a deeper connection with the character that had opened up his true character.

After doing a little bit of research on the character he played and analyzing his acceptance speech, I concluded these things.

All in all, these are simply speculations and my opinion. I do not think that any reason should have condoned the violence, and that Chris Rock was the bigger person in not making this incident into a legal issue.