![]() I had started my night with one of them, Rena DeAngelo, the set decorator for “ West Side Story.” But the nominees in the demoted categories weren’t buying it. The Academy had rebranded it the Golden Hour, after the late-afternoon span that gives filmmakers the honeyed light of the setting sun. In the endless run-up to this year’s Oscars, most of the chatter was about the eight categories that had been shunted to the pre-show before the live broadcast. Tears came to his eyes as he said, “Love will make you do crazy things.” But was that any justification for violence? In his speech, which had the raw, confused emotion of a man navigating euphoria, rage, shame, pride, and “Shit, what did I just do,” Smith returned over and over to the word “protect,” the concept that united the character he had won the Oscar for playing-Richard Williams, the father of Venus and Serena, in “ King Richard”-and the astonishing action he had just taken on live TV. Everyone fell silent as Smith’s face filled the bar monitor. Shut up!” He turned out to be Robert Glasper, a pianist who had just played in the onstage band. But, as the Best Actor nominees were read out, a man yelled, “Shh! We all want to hear what he got to say. Typically, attendees who escape to the lobby bars schmooze over wine and popcorn, paying little attention to the show. Jackson, John Travolta, and Uma Thurman presented the Best Actor award, a crowd that included Rami Malek gathered around the circular bar outside the orchestra section. And that was before the realization that Smith was, in all likelihood, about to win Best Actor and give a speech. It felt chaotic, unpredictable, shocking, alarming. ![]() But at the Dolby the mood was mostly bewilderment, like being at a bar where a fight between strangers has broken out. On social media, viewers were studying footage and taking sides, deconstructing the moment in terms of race, class, and trauma. Then Smith walked up to him and smacked him. Pinkett Smith’s is a result of her alopecia. What happened, the attendees (and the world) soon pieced together, was this: Rock made a joke comparing Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, to Demi Moore’s character in “G.I. “It was certainly not in our script.” A friend who was in the orchestra section texted me, “Will Smith just assaulted Chris Rock onstage. “Everything I know from backstage was that that was totally real,” he clarified. “Did you see it?” A man who worked a tech job at the ceremony came by. She turned to her companion, a guy who works for the Danish Ministry of Culture. “Maybe it was a warning shot? I dunno.” A Danish film producer was still piecing things together. “It looked like it was a joke at first,” a guy in a tuxedo told me. “They literally muted it on TV.”Īt the commercial break, I sprinted down to the ground-floor lobby. “I’m still in shock,” Uribe said, checking her phone. Diddy) Combs came out to keep the show moving. After Rock presented the Best Documentary award to Questlove and left the stage, Sean (P. ![]() ![]() The people in front of me murmured and shifted in their seats. Like everyone at the Dolby, she was having trouble reading the moment. She was Emily Uribe, a bubbly twenty-two-year-old influencer who had covered the red carpet for TikTok. “What just happened?” the woman next to me asked. “Keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth.” Smith was unmiked and palpably angry. (I am nearsighted.) “Wow,” Rock said, “Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me.” I wondered, Can people say “shit” on network TV? But it was the word “fucking” that clued me in. From the nosebleed section, it looked like two small, famous blobs doing a comic bit. It was hours into the ninety-fourth annual Academy Awards, and Will Smith had just walked onstage and slapped Chris Rock. Way up in Mezzanine 3, Row F of the Dolby Theatre, I got the sneaking sense that something was not going as planned. ![]()
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