The other day, I suggested that there was likely a shelf-life to conversations about Will Smith and the Oscars slap. I even said that two weeks was probably the limit to where people could freely offer up their opinions and say a bunch of sh-t about Will Smith. I think the Academy realized that too, that by their April 18th Board of Governors meeting, the anger towards Smith would no longer be urgent and palpable and the demands to punish him harshly would have largely dissipated. So the Academy higher-ups decided to push the meeting up to this coming Friday. Likely in the hope that there’s still a market to, like, take away Will’s Oscar and ban him for life, probably.
The Academy Board of Governors will meet this Friday, April 8, to discuss the actions and consequences for Will Smith after slapping Chris Rock during the 94th Oscars telecast. Originally scheduled to meet on April 18, in a letter obtained exclusively by Variety, the move comes after Smith’s resignation from the Academy.
“I am calling a board meeting for this Friday morning, April 8, at 9:00 a.m. PT, rather than the previously scheduled April 18 meeting, to address possible sanctions for Will Smith in response to his actions during the Oscars broadcast on March 27,” the letter begins.
Signed by Academy president David Rubin, the letter states: “Following Mr. Smith’s resignation of his Academy membership on Friday, April 1, suspension or expulsion are no longer a possibility, and the legally prescribed timetable no longer applies. It is in the best interest of all involved for this to be handled in a timely fashion.”
Rubin references the date change as “in accordance with California law and our Standards of Conduct because our agenda included possible suspension or expulsion of Mr. Smith from membership.” The meeting is set to take place virtually over Zoom.
The letter explained that the April 18th date was originally set to give Will time to consult a lawyer or prepare some kind of defense, or merely plead with the Academy to allow him to stay an AMPAS member. Because Will willingly gave up his Academy membership, he’s no longer expected to offer a defense or statement. Perhaps the meeting will be a mere formality, with everyone agreeing that all they need to do is issue a forceful statement condemning violence and acknowledging Will’s apology and his resignation. But I still believe some shenanigans are afoot. I bet they’ll find some new way to make it sound like Will is the worst predator they’ve ever seen! Nvm about Harvey Weinstein, Casey Affleck, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Mel Gibson, and on and on.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar.
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- North America Rights Only – Los Angeles, USA -20220327- Vanity Fair Oscar Dinner held at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California -PICTURED: Will Smith -PHOTO by: INSTARimages.com Disclaimer: This is an editorial, rights-managed image. Please contact INSTAR Images for licensing fee and rights information at sales@instarimages.com or call +1 212 414 0207. This image may not be published in any way that is, or might be deemed to be, defamatory, libelous, pornographic, or obscene. Please consult our sales department for any clarification needed prior to publication and use. INSTAR Images reserves the right to pursue unauthorized users of this material. If you are in violation of our intellectual property rights or copyright you may be liable for damages, loss of income, any profits you derive from the unauthorized use of this material and, where appropriate, the cost of collection and/or any statutory damages awarded For images containing underage children: Be advised that some Countries may have restricted privacy laws against publishing images of underage children. Inform yourself! Underage children may need to be removed or have their face pixelated before publishing
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- – Los Angeles, USA -20220327-The 94th Academy Awards-Arrivals -PICTURED: Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith -PHOTO by: Abby Grant/Cover Images/INSTARimages.com -Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith_4749.jpg This is an editorial, rights-managed image. Please contact Instar Images LLC for licensing fee and rights information at sales@instarimages.com or call +1 212 414 0207 This image may not be published in any way that is, or might be deemed to be, defamatory, libelous, pornographic, or obscene. Please consult our sales department for any clarification needed prior to publication and use. Instar Images LLC reserves the right to pursue unauthorized users of this material. If you are in violation of our intellectual property rights or copyright you may be liable for damages, loss of income, any profits you derive from the unauthorized use of this material and, where appropriate, the cost of collection and/or any statutory damages awarded
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- Tyler Perry, and Oscar® nominees Will Smith and Denzel Washington during the 94th Oscars® at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood in Los Angeles, CA, on Sunday, March 27, 2022.,Image: 673515395, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: Avalon Licensing Ltd. do not claim any Copyright of the attached image WORLD RIGHTS- Fee Payable Upon reproduction – For queries contact Avalon sales@Avalon.red London +44 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles +1 310 822 0419 Berlin +49 30 76 212 251 Madrid +34 91 533, Model Release: no, Credit line: Avalon.red / Avalon
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- Oscar® nominee Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith during the 94th Oscars® at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood in Los Angeles, CA, on Sunday, March 27, 2022.,Image: 673515422, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: Avalon Licensing Ltd. do not claim any Copyright of the attached image WORLD RIGHTS- Fee Payable Upon reproduction – For queries contact Avalon sales@Avalon.red London +44 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles +1 310 822 0419 Berlin +49 30 76 212 251 Madrid +34 91 533, Model Release: no, Credit line: Avalon.red / Avalon
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- Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith during the live ABC telecast of the 94th Oscars® at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood in Los Angeles, CA, on Sunday, March 27, 2022.,Image: 673515557, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: Avalon Licensing Ltd. do not claim any Copyright of the attached image WORLD RIGHTS- Fee Payable Upon reproduction – For queries contact Avalon sales@Avalon.red London +44 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles +1 310 822 0419 Berlin +49 30 76 212 251 Madrid +34 91 533, Model Release: no, Credit line: Avalon.red / Avalon
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- Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith attends the 2022 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Radhika Jones celebrating the 94th annual Academy Awards at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 27, 2022 in Beverly Hills, California,Image: 673579090, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
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- Will Smith attends the 2022 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Radhika Jones celebrating the 94th annual Academy Awards at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 27, 2022 in Beverly Hills, California,Image: 673579164, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Will Smith, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
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- Will Smith attends the 2022 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Radhika Jones celebrating the 94th annual Academy Awards at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 27, 2022 in Beverly Hills, California,Image: 673579181, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Will Smith, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
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- Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith attends the 2022 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Radhika Jones celebrating the 94th annual Academy Awards at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 27, 2022 in Beverly Hills, California,Image: 673579196, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
It’s easier for them to justify punishing a black man today than address the evils of certain white winners in the past.
Anything they do will lack insight or intelligence, calling it now.
How to make the Oscars less relevant for $1000, Ken.
Honestly!
The academy and Chris Rock can f**k off.
Indeed.
Totally agree!!
This is ridiculous. All of the white predators that have walked across that stage and participated in the academy, and WS is the man they want to focus on. Because he’s a black man and so obviously an apology and resignation aren’t enough from him.
I also suspect there are shenanigans afoot and they want to “punish” him further. I hope I’m wrong.
Of course.. By resigning, Will Smith took away significant leverage they had over him. Perhaps the only real leverage they had. Everything they do now looks like overkill.
I think they want to punish him because their mismanagement of the incident made them look bad. They need to deflect blame and attention.
It is absolutely ridiculous. It’s getting out of hand. Should Will have slapped Chris Rock? No. But he apologized and resigned. Chris is not injured, and we all know he’ll be *fine.* There’s nothing more to punish Will for.
Ugh – the Academy really wants to show everyone how racist they still are – they are really going to shoot themselves in the foot. The only reasonable step I could see them taking is announcing that Smith can’t present the Oscar last year (per the usual tradition), but given that they’ve still left known white predators appear at and present at the Oscars makes even that gross and racist.
Pssst,,, Academy: HE ALREADY QUIT YOU. Besides, isn’t sitting through speech after sycophantic speech, punishment enough?
I’m not condoning violence but the absolute hypocrisy, the caucasity of these people.
Right. Not condoning violence either but as I’ve seen it said, multiple things can be true at the same time.
Yep, and you know if they could find a way to justify it they would have Weinstein back in their good graces.
Caucasity (caucacity?) – interesting word. Personally think white women are the worst, and I am one! Bill Burr vs. Chris Rock link: https://www.tiktok.com/foryou?is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7080649152572525867#/@sunnmcheaux/video/7080649152572525867
Sorry @Kirk but as a black woman, I don’t find it helpful to paint everyone in a group with the same brush. It distracts from legitimate complaints and insults the people who genuinely care. I know you mean well though.
Will apologized and resigned from the academy. It’s over. Everyone needs to move on.
That’s what I say. They condemned his actions. Condemn it again, if need be and move on. But if they even attempt to take away his Oscars while Weinstein, Polanski and the like keep theirs, I will break something. :-/
I think they’re gonna take the Oscar away. I think that’s the only punishment they can really dole out and clearly they want to do something. They’re clearly not taking the point of view that he quit and it’ll be overkill. I hope I’m wrong and they just ban him for a few years or something
They’re not going to take the Oscar away. They expelled both Polanski and Weinstein from membership but technically they still have their Oscar trophies. The Academy is idiotic but not THAT idiotic, they know that benchmark is there.
They’re going to issue a statement condemning violence, encouraging healing, and banning him from the ceremony and Academy events for a couple of years. And then they will try to pretend this never happened.
That’s the way I see it unfolding. Accept the resignation, ban for a specified time and move on. I don’t think the Academy is out of touch not to know that pulling Smith’s Oscar would shred what little credibility the Academy has left with the general public.
You know, I *hope* it would be the case that, at the very least, they take note of the deplorable optics and racist undertones of this zoom meeting (hold on…my eyes just rolled so hard they fell out…), and they get together to basically do nothing.
I mean, they could be great, acknowledge human failing, ask Will back into the academy, and make a public call for civility and healing and mental health awareness on all sides of any issue but that’s a wild fantasy that I’ve just created and will never happen.
All these announcements are indicating that they are going to do something truly despicable given the lack of consequences for the actual predators who still have trophies and invitations to the shows, let alone those exiled from the country or sitting in jail.
I think the slap was uncalled for and inexcusable on a human-to-human level, but the consequences (most of which have been overblown) for it have been meted out already. The academy is full of it if they think they haven’t already jumped the shark on this.
Ban him for what? He already resigned and left their triflin’ asses.
The problem is this is showing everybody that the Academy is only a big party once a year for millionaires. It doesn’t really do anything. Yeah I know they restore old films and store old costumes. But does that really do anything for anybody? All award shows are stupid. It’s just a way for these arrogant people to puff themselves up.
I think after the pandemic, people really are just over celebrity culture in the sense of the flashy-ness and their inability to relate to the majority of the population. The entitlement aspect really rubbed people in the wrong way as most people were struggling to make ends meet and it all just seems so superfluous.
I absolutely feel the art and story telling of movies, music, literature, etc. helped people heal immensely from the impacts of social isolation and quarantining away from people – but needing the atta-boy/girl, attention, accolades in the same way things were before a worldwide pandemic just aren’t working anymore.
Maybe they should include people’s stories who are inspirations to the industry and highlight the mentorship (as Denzel, Tyler, etc. showed that night towards Will) in moving forward. Bring attention towards good partnership and service the Academy can do working with actors on health, racial, sexism, comedy used in the form of bullying issues (to start a change in the culture of the industry).
They are NOT GOING TO TAKE HIS OSCAR AWAY. He earned it with his performance, so stop with this.
Ah yes, take his Oscar away knowing he owned that role, the issue is with his behavior, not his acting chops, but then Will is a little melanin heavy compared to Weinstein or C.K….it is only natural that they make an example out of him.
The Oscars can take a fast car off a cliff for all I care at this point, a bunch of hypocrites!
Nothing is happening to Will.
He resigned from the Academy, which just means he can’t vote.
Some industry people have made some PR murmurings about some potential delays but none of them will walk away from projects where $$$ has been spent.
There’s no by-law or mechanism for the Academy to take his Oscar and who wants a second place Oscar?
There are no criminal charges.
No consequences for anyone here but public opinion.
Hollywood walks away from potential money made by Black people every day. Look at how much bank Black Panther made. Did they make as many clones as they could to cash in? Did they start looking for the new Jordan Peele, Will Smith, or Eddie Murphy knowing how much they made/could make?
Or have they been insisting for decades that films with Black actors don’t make money/can’t be sold overseas?
Just look at how frequently they cancel shows with Black leads – no matter how many awards they get nominated for) after one season or two. Yet they can always keep shows with white casts and lower ratings going for sometimes decades.
All I know is that you can’t rule out backwards decisions, self-sabotage, and pettiness when Black people making money is involved.
I can’t disagree with you. I just think it’s a stalemate. The Academy has been slow to get on board with equity and diversity. So much so, that I think they’ve made themselves culturally irrelevant. What ever they think about Will being in the wrong, their tone deafness and the scrutiny will moderate their response.
They will not get away without making some statement about evaluating their programs for inclusivity and possible offense. Also, a Plan B if anything goes sideways like this again.
The Academy is showing its bloomers.
Stop hiring insult comics to mc. Streamline the show.
But they won’t rise to the occasion, so the ratings will continue to tank.
They need a complete overhaul. The show’s been irrelevant for a half dozen years at least.
It’s a tough show to cut. For actors, this is their Big Show party for themselves, a chance to puff up their egos and revel in their status. For the money-people, it’s their opportunity to hobnob with their famous employees. And that’s the problem with televising it. It’s really only truly relevant to those two groups of people.
Industries have awards for excellence. The Academy has used theirs as a marketing event for cinema. Holiday films were dubbed “contenders” and then it was a big push to get audiences out to theatres over Spring break after the winners You got to see your favourite glamourous star in a fantasy outfit. Movies were seen as classy and aspirational.
But the schedule is disrupted by streaming and alternative media. Films market themselves directly on social media. Movie stars offer a direct relationship to them through their own social media. (This has killed celebrity news and gossip as well.) The new audience isn’t much interested the designer goods on display. Controversy about lack of diversity has been met with clumsy choices for MC spots and entertainment like comedy. It’s a clunker.
Agreed with your points.
They would be insane to take away his Oscar, it would open them up to all kinds of criticism over the numerous predators that got to keep theirs. The best decision the Academy could make right now is as Kaiser said – just to issue a strongly-worded statement. Then maybe set up some rule going forward about banning members if they commit violence at the Oscars, which they don’t have to enforce in this case because Will removed himself.
I havent seen Jadas comments covered here yet. I probably missed it scrolling.
Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. There is no one at the Academy qualified to punish him. Let it go.
What they need to do is come up with a procedure of what to do if an audience member, NO MATTER WHO IT IS, interrupts the show. The producers inaction right after ‘the slap’, made the entire incident worse than it was. And then the back and forth statements afterwards. The Academy has handled this so badly.
I don’t know if they need a policy for disruptions, they need a policy for commuting acts of violence and going on expletive laden rants for sure.
And they could make perpetrating an act of violence at one of their events an immediate disqualification from being an Academy member and receiving awards going forward. It wouldn’t be retroactive (which is fine, Will Smith is not Shia Leboef or Sean Penn or whoever and that has to be taken into consideration) but it sets a boundary for these events.
I mean they’ve done pjuck all to punish themselves for the decades of racism and exclusion. I for one will never watch that piece of crap ever again they were fine with making Jada the butt of a joke in regards to her illness they e never made right on their racism to this day it’s all garbage to me it’s a big building of garbage. Never watching the Oscars ever again It’s not like I’ve watched in decades anyway
If they make a perfunctory statement condemning violence and say that he’s banned for a year then it’ll look like they’re trying to close the book and move on. If they do anything more than that it’ll really look like they’re motivated to punish him for embarrassing them by revealing their incompetent management rather than for the physical assault itself.
The Acadamy needs to put this to bed & move on. They have no moral ground to punish anyone and we all know why.
I’m surprised so many people think they will take away Will’s Oscar. That makes zero sense considering so many people have done worse. As dumb as the Academy is I doubt they are so stupid to think that would be a good idea. I think Will will be banned from Academy events for a few years.
Please stop defending violence. It’s the most unfeminist thing you’ve ever done on this site.
Please stop dismissing the emotional abuse that has been heaped on Jada since 1997 by that man. Emotional abuse is just as devastating as physical and to expect everyone to react appropriately is ridiculous you’re the Unfeminist here. You’re also a gaslighting ableists by ignoring Jada sit down
Chris Rock’s comments were misogynistic for sure, taken together he is essentially telling Jada to be quiet and be attractive in the way he seems appropriate but they don’t seem to have ongoing contact so to suggest that abuse has been “heaped” on her is odd. They are bad comments for sure and there is a history there but it’s three comments over 25 years, not a sustained campaign.
In what way are people being ableist about Jada? I don’t think anyone is denying that her alopecia is serious but the fact that it is a serious condition doesn’t mean people have to condone violence in her defense.
I agree. I don’t really understand why a physical assault is somehow defended here? Not saying that others who have won awards were not horrible people who did not deserve them, but isn’t there a difference here?
The difference is that this happened during the ceremony, at the very event hosted by the Academy. A physical assault in view of millions of people. Almost every country in the world would list this as a criminal offence (while a bad joke, swearing, and even stating mysogynist views is not). If Harvey Weinstein had gone up and slapped Chris Rock, do you really think he would have gotten away with it? If a “seat filler” in the audience had gone up to slap Christ Rock, would they have gotten away with it?
I don’t think that a criminal act while at the awards show would have been ignored, no matter the perpetrator. If violence is not ok, and I think we can all agree on that, then it is simply not ok.
As for Jada – she is a powerful woman in her own right, with her own platform through her talk show and her fame. She would have been perfectly capable of telling Chris Rock where to go. Her husband took all of that power away from her and painted her like a damsel in distress, which she decidedly is not.
Sheesh! They are NOT taking his Oscar away. He earned it. It’s his.
He has already resigned, so there isn’t much else they can do.