Almost a year after the slap in the face heard around the world, 2022 Best Actor Oscar winner Will Smith has taken to TikTok to get cheeky and move on.
In a duo video posted on Tuesday, Smith reacts to TikToker Sam Rossi aka @missmoneyworking digging into “an absolutely crazy exercise” that will “change your life.” Rossi suggests anyone looking to get real with themselves pick up an inanimate object and ask it what it thinks of you. The idea: your intuition will “speak” to you as an object and reveal something that you may not be comfortable enough to say yourself. Thus, at the end of the video, Smith tries the experiment… with his Oscar statue.
“This has got to be the toughest flex in 2023,” one commenter wrote.
It’s kinda funny – and a knock on what looks like an unprecedented public rehabilitation journey with no real end.
Last March, shortly before Smith won an Oscar for his work in King Richard, ceremony host Chris Rock hurled an insult at Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, causing an outburst during the televised affair. “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!” Smith exclaimed from his seat before jumping up, taking the stage and punching Rock in front of 16.6 million viewers. Smith immediately reacted to the altercation in his acceptance speech, then spent the next few months trying to undo the damage, a journey that ultimately led to his resignation from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. AMPAS didn’t stop there: Noting that the 94th Academy Awards had been “overshadowed by the unacceptable and damaging behavior we saw Mr. Smith exhibit on stage,” the organization banned Smith from the Oscars for 10 years. years.
Smith, who before the Oscar slap and win had gone to great lengths to cash in on traditional Hollywood fame for social media stardom on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and other real estate platforms, n didn’t escape the spotlight for long after the mess. As many had dubbed him, Smith, after taking a deep breath, was on the apology tour starting in the summer of 2022. Last July, he released a YouTube apology video that would make the Try Guys proud, noting that he was “trying to be remorseful without being ashamed of me. I’m human, and I made a mistake, and (…) I try not to think of myself as shit. Smith would bounce on social media in August, with goofy videos poking fun at his newly deconstructed persona.
Unfortunately for Smith, there was a deadline for realigning his brand: Later in the year, the actor was set to direct Emancipationa historical drama training day director Antoine Fuqua on the escape of a runaway slave to freedom. Produced by Apple and Smith’s Westbrook Studios, the film has been identified as a potential Oscar player – or would have been if its lead role hadn’t simply been banned from the Oscars. Although technically eligible for another Best Actor award, Hollywood pundits have spent the fall wondering if Smith could pull himself out of the slap hole in time to make the case for a nomination. Smith too.
“I definitely lose a few winks every night thinking that I could have potentially penalized my team,” the actor said in a November interview with Entertainment Weekly. “But I’m going to do everything I can to make sure everyone is seen in the light they deserve.”
Later that month, with Oscar season in full swing, Smith joined Trevor Noah on The daily show to discuss the film – and dig again into the slap, which has gone on to define its existence.
“It was a horrible night, as you can imagine,” Smith told Noah. “There are a lot of nuances and complexities in there. But at the end of the day, I just, I lost it, you know? I guess I would just say: you never know what someone is going through (…) I was going through something that night, you know? This does not justify my behavior at all.
Later in the interview, Smith opened up on a bit of the psychology behind the blowout, saying the man we saw take the stage and punch Chris Rock “was the little boy who watched his dad beat his mom, You know ? It all just bubbled up then. It’s not what I want to be.
The 95th Academy Awards will be presented on March 12, 2023. Smith is not among the Best Actor nominees, nor will he attend the event due to his ban from the Academy. But the conversation about the slap, or perhaps the cultural fallout of a psychically explosive moment, continues. Data miners endlessly debate whether Smith’s stock of famous people has really fallen; opinion writers explain why Chris Rock deserved to be slapped; the Brits are trying to make jokes at Smith’s expense, much to society’s chagrin (and you better believe someone at the Oscars will “go for it” during the telecast). The slap is here to stay, and Smith, a movie star on endless apology tour And a social creator who needs content knows this.