Over the past few nights, Jimmy Kimmel—a former Oscars host—has repeatedly weighed in on the slap seen ’round the world during his late-night monologues. First, he upbraided Will Smith for initially laughing at Chris Rock’s joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head (she suffers from alopecia) before storming the stage and giving the presenter a big ol’ smack. Then Kimmel mocked Fox News’ baseless theory that the whole incident was staged.
Round three came Wednesday evening, as a dubious claim surfaced from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that it had asked Smith to leave following the slap and he refused.
“I don’t know who asked him to leave. Maybe Jazzy Jeff asked him?” cracked Kimmel, adding, “Who would have accepted his Oscar if he was thrown out? Chris Rock, maybe? I don’t know!”
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“You know, usually when someone’s asked to leave and refuses to go, that’s when security comes in and takes that person away,” he continued. “But in this case, they decided to give him an Oscar and let him back onstage to speak.”
The academy’s claim that it asked Smith to leave appears to be at odds with previous reporting on the incident, including CNN’s Chloe Melas’ revelation that “There were immediate discussions” about removing Smith from the Oscars post-smack, “but the academy decision makers were seated in various spots in the Dolby Theater [sic] and couldn’t mobilize to make a decision before he won best actor.”
Then came possible murderer O.J. Simpson’s statement that the whole slap episode was “unfortunate” and “Will was wrong… Look, I understood the feeling.”
“When O.J.’s giving a lecture on self-control…” offered Kimmel.
After Kimmel taped his show, Rock sort of broke his silence on the slap during a stand-up comedy show in Boston, saying, “I don’t have a bunch of shit about what happened, so if you came to hear that, I have a whole show I wrote before this weekend. I’m still kind of processing what happened. So, at some point I’ll talk about that shit. And it will be serious and funny.”
The folks who paid thousands of dollars for tickets were surely disappointed.
