Whereas not lots of people watched final’s yr’s Oscars, everybody is aware of what occurred: Jessica Chastain received Finest Actress for enjoying Tammy Faye Bakker. OK, that did occur, however the way more noteworthy occasion that occurred was Will Smith, everybody’s favourite Contemporary Prince of Bel-Air, slapped Chris Rock onstage in entrance of tens of millions of individuals.
Now known as “The Slap,” the incident had immediate repercussions. Smith was banned from the Academy for 10 years and had a few of his movie initiatives both delayed or outright canceled. Rock laid low for some time and solely in March commented instantly in regards to the incident in a well-liked Netflix comedy particular, Selective Outrage. With the 2023 Oscars simply across the nook, lots of people are asking if the Suicide Squad actor goes to attend this yr’s ceremony. In any case, it’s a practice for the Finest Actor winner to return the next yr to current the Finest Actress award. So is Will Smith going to be on the ninety fifth annual Academy Awards?
The reply is easy … and complex
The brief reply isn’t any. The Academy has no plans to interrupt its ban and let Smith return to attend the ceremony. That doesn’t imply that the 2023 Oscars received’t deal with what occurred final yr. In a press convention earlier this week, government producer Molly McNearney introduced, “We’re going to acknowledge it, after which we’re gonna transfer on.” She added, “We don’t need to make this yr about final yr. It’s actually one thing we are able to and can deal with in a comedic style.”
On the very least, count on a couple of jokes right here and there as comedians in all probability can’t resist poking enjoyable on the incident. Who is aware of, perhaps Chris Rock will make a shock look and make some joke about it as a approach for everybody to “transfer on.”
A distant however nonetheless potential state of affairs is Smith himself returning. In any case, earlier than “The Slap,” the Academy’s most embarrassing second ever was when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway introduced the unsuitable Finest Image winner in 2017. That incident, recognized now as “Envelopegate,” concerned Dunaway mistakenly studying Emma Stone’s Finest Actress envelope for La La Land as an alternative of the Finest Image envelope, which revealed the winner to be Moonlight. But solely a yr later, the Academy introduced Dunaway and Beatty again to current the Finest Image Oscar to Guillermo Del Toro’s The Form of Water.
If the Academy was keen to deliver the perpetrators of certainly one of its greatest public embarrassments again so quickly, it’s not out of the realm of improbability that they might be planning to secretly deliver Smith again to make amends. It might be one of the best ways for everybody concerned to forge forward.
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