“Saturday Night Live” first broke into the week-long controversy over Will Smith, mocking the way “The New Prince” turned into a different person Sunday night when he suddenly went up on stage and slap Comedian Chris Rock in the face at the Oscars because of a joke about his wife.
In a sketch taking place at the Academy Awards, host Jerrod Carmichael plays a seat filler who gets a chance to meet one of his heroes, Will Smith, played by Chris Reed. The two started a harmless friendly conversation and the filler asked Smith for a selfie when suddenly he heard Chris Rock’s “GI Jane 2” joke about Smith’s bald wife.
“Hey, I’ll be a guy in the back,” Smith says, moving off the frame before hearing a loud “slap,” shocking Carmichael before returning to his seat and continuing the conversation as if nothing had happened.
Smith interrupted the conversation to shout the now infamous “Keep my wife’s name out of your mouth!” He smiles and says “Oh man, I love Oscars, man” to the filler, before shouting the phrase again.
Another seat filler, Kyle Mooney, is sitting up after a trip to the bathroom, having missed the slap.
“Oh my God, we’re next to Will Smith. I have to tweet this. Stop, and he’s heading over,” he says, pulling out his phone and apparently seeing the clip. “Oh my God,” he says horrified.
Smith tries to introduce himself and continue the casual conversation, but both fillers are clearly afraid of the actor.
“Richard Williams was a fierce protector of his family,” Smith suddenly cried, referring to the role he played that won him an Oscar for Best Actor. “I’ll say that in my talk, man,” he said to stuffing the seats.
at Opening monologueCarmichael, the stand-up comedian, joked about the smack controversy all over the place.
“Isn’t that kind of crazy – it’s like we’ve been talking about it for a long time,” he said. “This will blow your mind – can you believe it’s been six days? This happened a week ago. Doesn’t it feel like it happened years ago? Doesn’t it feel like it happened when we were all in high school?”
“It happened on Sunday. It’s Saturday, brother.”
“By Wednesday, I wanted to kill myself,” he joked.
“But on Friday, I vowed to myself that I would never talk about it again. Then Lorne came into my locker room. “I think you need to talk about it,” he said, laughing from the crowd.
Weekend update The duo Michael Che and Colin Jost also couldn’t help joking about the so-called ‘audio slap’ around the world, spending nearly five minutes of their part in the crash.
Jost, who is married to two Academy Awards-nominated actress Scarlett Johansson, joked that the slap could have personal implications.
Will Smith, for those of you who don’t know, went on stage during the Academy Awards and slapped Chris Rock after he made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith, which I believe was an act of disgrace that sets a terrible precedent for having to defend your wife at award shows.
“I think we have to just admit that this is one of the craziest things we will ever see in our lives. It really is like a Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction, but if you slap Janet Timberlake’s nipple,” Jost joked.