Months away from the awards ceremony Oscar 2022, an event in which Will Smith would go down in history not only for winning the best actor category for the movie King Richard, but for slapping Chris Rock after celebrating the joke that the presenter made about the physique of his wife, Jada; The actor spoke of the violent reaction that the golden statuette and his career could have cost him. “It was a horrible night,” he told The Daily Show to Trevor Noah, his first television appearance since. “(There are) a lot of nuances and complexities, but at the end of the day I lost my mind. I guess what I would say is you never know what someone is going through,” he commented about not having a good time that night. “(Without that) justifying my behavior at all.”
The video of the ceremony went viral precisely because Smith laughs with his colleagues about the joke, until he sees Jada Pinkett disapprove the comment. “You are asking, what did I learn? And it is that we have to be kind to each other ”, he answers Noah. “It’s hard. And I think what hurt me the most was that I took my hard drive and made it difficult for other people. You know, it’s like I get the idea when they say hurt people hurt people.”
In that sense, Noah commented that a friend called him and told him that it seemed that the world had seen “the real Smith on stage.” But the actor took up his past that is written in his biography ‘Will’. “There were many things. It was the little boy who saw his father hit his mother, you know, all of that came up in that moment. It’s just not what I want to be. I had to forgive myself for being human. Trust me, there is no one who hates the fact that I am human more than me. It’s like, I want, I’ve always wanted to be Superman. I always wanted to jump in and save the damsel in distress, you know? And I had to humble myself and realize that I’m a flawed human being, and I still have the opportunity to go out into the world and contribute in a way that fills my heart and hopefully helps other people.”
Before his television interview, Smith told Entertainment Weekly that what he feared most about his upcoming film projects is that they would hurt his team. The American media stresses that what happened made “any hope of returning to the Oscar stage in 2023 vanish.” Although he did not lose the statuette, the actor resigned from the Academy and was given a 10-year suspension for “unacceptable and harmful behavior.”
In an exclusive panel discussion with the co-stars of ‘emancipation‘, Ben Foster and Charmaine Bingwa, Will Smith acknowledged that repercussions for his conduct last March could change acceptance of his upcoming Apple TV+ drama, about a real-life enslaved man. “The only discomfort on my heart is that so many people have done a spectacular job on this film. I hope my team won’t be penalized at all for my actions. I think (director Antoine Fuqua) and (director of photography Robert Richardson) and Ben and Charmaine: they’ve all done such an amazing job. Definitely, I lose a couple of winks of sleep every night thinking I could have potentially penalized my team, but I will do my best to make sure everyone is seen in the light they deserve.”
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