In the wake of slapping Chris Rock onstage at the Oscars, Will Smith said Friday that he is resigning from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
In a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Smith said he was heartbroken and would accept all consequences for his conduct during Sunday’s ceremony.
“My actions at the 94th Academy Awards presentation were shocking, painful, and inexcusable. The list of those I have hurt is long and includes Chris, his family, many of my dear friends and loved ones, all those in attendance, and global audiences at home,” Smith said. “I betrayed the trust of the Academy. I deprived other nominees and winners of their opportunity to celebrate and be celebrated for their extraordinary work. I am heartbroken. I want to put the focus back on those who deserve attention for their achievements and allow the Academy to get back to the incredible work it does to support creativity and artistry in film.”
Earlier this week, the Academy began disciplinary action against Smith after a meeting of its board of governors, and issued a statement saying Smith was asked to leave the show following the slap but that he refused. The statement didn’t provide details, but also acknowledged that the Academy “could have handled the situation differently.” One board member told THR that it still wasn’t made clear who asked Smith to leave, or the sequence of events.
Smith’s resignation means he can no longer vote for the Oscars — but he can still be nominated for future Academy Awards, attend future ceremonies and keep the statue he won. Still, the Academy’s formal review will continue.
“We have received and accepted Mr. Will Smith’s immediate resignation from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” the Academy said in a statement. “We will continue to move forward with our disciplinary proceedings against Mr. Smith for violations of the Academy’s Standards of Conduct, in advance of our next scheduled board meeting on April 18.”
The actor said in his statement Friday that he has responded to the Academy’s disciplinary hearing notice and “will fully accept any and all consequences” for his conduct.
Rock was presenting best documentary feature at the 2022 Oscars on Sunday when he made a G.I. Jane joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who has a shaved head (the actress has alopecia). After returning to his seat, Smith shouted at Rock to keep his wife’s name out of his “fucking mouth.”
Later in the show, while accepting the Oscar for best actor for his performance in King Richard, Smith made a tearful apology to the Academy and fellow nominees. But it wasn’t until Monday, in an Instagram post, that Smith apologized to Rock. Rock has remained mostly silent, telling the audience at his comedy show in Boston on Wednesday night, “I’m still kind of processing what happened. … So at some point I’ll talk about that shit. And it’ll be serious, and it’ll be funny.”
In an interview that aired Friday on Good Morning America, the producer of the 2022 Oscars telecast, Will Packer, said he initially thought Smith smacking Rock was a bit, until Rock came backstage and confirmed that he had really been hit. “Once I saw Will yelling at the stage with such vitriol, my heart dropped. And I just remember thinking, ‘Oh no, oh no. Not like this,’” recalled Packer. “Chris was keeping his head when everyone else was losing theirs.”
Packer said Rock insisted he was fine and refused to press charges when approached by the LAPD.
Eddie Murphy is in early talks to play Parliament-Funkadelic leader George Clinton in an upcoming biopic.
Murphy also will serve as producer with Davis Entertainment’s John Davis, Catherine Davis, and John Fox. They are tying down rights with the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner, and then they will set writers and shop the project.
Murphy has a three-picture deal with Amazon that came after the success of Coming 2 America, and this is a passion project for him.
Clinton is widely considered to be the Godfather of Funk, rivaling James Brown and Sly Stone as the foremost innovators in that musical genre. The film will tell the story of the iconic musician’s humble beginnings in North Carolina in the 1940s to the formation of his groundbreaking bands Parliament and Funkadelic and ultimately to becoming a major influence on artists of the hip-hop generation including Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Outkast and Wu-Tang Clan, among many others.
Murphy teamed with Davis on the Netflix film Dolemite Is My Name, which got him a lot of accolades playing the unlikely Blaxploitation film star Rudy Ray Moore. He then followed with Coming 2 America, the sequel to his 1988 comedy classic. Murphy next begins production on the Kenya Barris-directed Netflix comedy You People, in which he co-stars with Jonah Hill. That will be followed with Beverly Hills Cop 4 this summer, as he reprises his Axel Foley role. Murphy separately was Emmy-nominated for his long-awaited return to Saturday Night Live, the show that launched him in the early 1980s.
Clinton was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, alongside 15 other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. In 2019, he and those members were given their Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards.
Murphy is repped by WME and Skip Brittenham.
Source: Deadline
We had a chance to interview Executive Producer, writer, and comedian Rell Battle. If you aren’t aware, Battle has been a staple in comedy for many years and has worked on many projects including Will Smith’s This Joka, Jeff Ross’ Roast Battle, and he was instrumental in getting Will Smith on stage for his comedy performance!
Anyway, we get a chance to talk to Battle about his start, his upcoming projects, and his thoughts on the Oscars!
See the interview below;
As everyone has been talking about the Sunday night broadcast of The Academy Awards and how Will Smith physically assaulted Chris Rock while on stage after Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett-Smith, no one has bothered to ask how is Chris Rock, and how is he after the assault?
Well, we conducted an interview with Blacktree TV (one of the leading Black media outlets that have been conducting interviews for more than 20 years) to discuss the treatment of Black media on red carpets, and coincidentally, since he was backstage, we asked him what was Rock’s immediate reaction to the incident.
Check out the interview with Blacktree TV below;
Chris Rock will return to the stage for his ongoing comedy tour this week, after being slapped by Will Smith on the Oscars stage Sunday night over a joke he made about the actor’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
The on-screen altercation is one of the most dramatic unplanned events to occur in Academy Awards history, made even more peculiar by Smith accepting the award for best actor less than an hour after his outburst. However, the dramatic moment did seem to inspire some viewers to buy tickets to see Rock perform live; one secondary ticketing marketplace, TickPick, reports that they have sold more tickets to the comedian’s tour overnight than they did in the past month combined. They also claim that ticket prices have surged since Sunday night, going up from a minimum of $46 per ticket on March 18 to a minimum of $341.
Rock is set to perform six shows at Boston’s Wilbur Theatre from March 30 through April 1 before officially kicking off his Ego Death World Tour on April 2. While tickets for his Boston shows sold out quickly, there are still tickets available on resale sites such as Vivid Seats, Ticketmaster and Stubhub. The comedian will then travel to more than 30 cities for the North American leg of his tour, which marks the first time in five years that the comic will perform new material across the country.
“Lauded by peers and critics alike, Chris Rock is one of our generation’s strongest comedic voices,” Live Nation said in a statement. “With a career spanning more than three decades, Rock has enjoyed ongoing success in both film and television as a comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director.”
Rock currently has 38 dates scheduled for the tour, hitting major cities such as Las Vegas, Denver, Oakland, Seattle, New York, Chicago, and Toronto. After Boston, he’ll head to the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City for two shows, before wrapping up at Los Angeles’s Dolby Theatre on Nov. 17th.
Source: Variety
Today we had a chance to interview screenwriter, producer, and actor, Rodney Barnes!
In case you aren’t familiar, Barnes has written and/or produced The Boondocks, My Wife & Kids, Everybody Hates Chris, and now is the head writer on HBO’s new show Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty!
In the interview below, we asked Barnes about these shows and we also asked about his upcoming projects that he has coming up with Netflix, plus what he thought about the plight of the comic book industry; especially since he has been a comic book writer for awhile with such brands as Marvel and Image Comics.
See the interview below;
Will Smith has issued an apology after slapping Chris Rock on the Oscars stage Sunday night.
“Violence in all of its forms is poisonous and destructive. My behavior at last night’s Academy Awards was unacceptable and inexcusable. Jokes at my expense are part of the job, but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally,” Smith wrote. “I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris. I was out of line and I was wrong. I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be. There is no place for violence in a world of love and kindness.”
The post continued, “I would also like to apologize to the Academy, the producers of the show, all the attendees and everyone watching around the world. I would like to apologize to the Williams Family and my King Richard Family. I deeply regret that my behavior has stained what has been an otherwise gorgeous journey for all of us. I am a work in progress.”
The altercation happened when Rock took the stage to present the best documentary award and made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith being in a sequel to “G.I. Jane.” Pinkett Smith has been open about the fact that she has alopecia, which causes hair loss. Smith then ran on stage, slapping Rock and quickly returning to his seat. “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!” Smith yelled once he was seated.
The moment stunned viewers, who took to social media as it wasn’t immediately clear whether the altercation was a skit or not. Just a few moments later, Smith won the Oscar for best actor for his performance in “King Richard.” In his speech, he apologized to the Academy and his fellow nominees, but did not address Rock.
“I want to apologize to the Academy. I want to apologize to all my fellow nominees. This is a beautiful moment and I’m not crying for winning an award. It’s not about winning an award for me. It’s about being able to shine a light on all of the people. Tim and Trevor and Zack and Saniyya and Demi and Aunjanue and the entire cast and crew of ‘King Richard,’ Venus and Serena, the entire Williams family. Art imitates life. I look like the crazy father, just like they said about Richard Williams,” Smith said.
During commercial breaks, both Smith’s publicist and Denzel Washington were seen talking to the actor. In his speech, Smith shared the advice Washington gave him: “At your highest moment, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you.”
Smith continued, “I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people. I know to do what we do, you got to be able to take abuse. You got to be able to have people talk crazy about you. In this business you got to be able to have people disrespecting you. And you got to smile and you got to pretend like that’s okay.”
The morning after a raucous Oscarcast that saw Will Smith slap presenter Chris Rock in the face over his joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has issued another statement.
“The Academy condemns the actions of Mr. Smith at last night’s show. We have officially started a formal review around the incident and will explore further action and consequences in accordance with our Bylaws, Standards of Conduct and California law.”
The follows a late night tweet by AMPAS following the altercation in which they posted, “The Academy does not condone violence of any form.”
That probe could see Smith ejected from AMPAS or suffer some sort of suspension from the organization and its events, including next year’s Oscars.
View co-host and Academy Governor in the Actor’s branch Whoopi Goldberg said today, “We’re not going to take that Oscar from him.”
“There will be consequences I’m sure, but I don’t think that’s what they’re going to do, particularly because Chris said ‘Listen, I’m not pressing any charges.’” added Goldberg referring to how Rock wasn’t pressing any charges against Smith with the LAPD.
“I think it was a lot of stuff probably built up,” Goldberg said today, noting that Will and Jada Pinkett Smith have been the butt of jokes for various reasons for years, including previous jabs from Rock. “I think he overreacted…I think he had one of those moments where it was like G.D. it, just stop. I get it, not everybody acts the way we would like them to act under pressure. And he snapped.”
Though Rock declined to file a report with the LAPD, the Fargo star actually has six months to change his mind. Under California law, an assault like what Smith conducted upon Rock could result in a maximum of six months behind bars and a $100,000 fine.
With Rock not filing a police report at present, it is unlikely the Academy could take any legal measures like that against Smith, though it is likely to be among the topics raised at the group’s upcoming board meeting where they’ll do their traditional de-brief of the ceremony.
It is clear in the aftermath of the incident, that several board members are very upset with what went down on Sunday night and how it was handled, or rather not handled. Despite some backstage consultations, the organization and producers decided not to remove Smith from the event and the Dolby Theater, we hear. In fact, the handwringing went on so long that over half an hour passed and Smith was back up on stage accepting his Best Actor award for his King Richard performance.
Source: Deadline
CODA‘s best picture win at the 94th annual Academy Awards provided the telecast with a never-before-seen visual: a Dolby Theatre full of celebrities waving their hands aloft in the American Sign Language sign for applause, and a pair of ASL interpreters onscreen — one onstage, translating the producers’ spoken acceptance speeches for the audience, and another standing just below the platform, signing those speeches for the benefit of the film’s deaf castmembers.
The first film to center deaf characters and receive wide distribution (Apple bought the feature for $25 million at Sundance last year) became the first such movie to net the Oscars’ big prize, in addition to best adapted screenplay for writer-director Sian Heder and best supporting actor for Troy Kotsur. The latter means that both parents in CODA are played by Oscar winners: Kotsur and co-star Marlee Matlin, who 35 years ago became the first deaf performer ever to win an Academy Award.
Last year’s supporting actress winner, Youn Yuh-jung, signaled Kotsur’s win by signing “congratulations” (other viewers interpreted that she tried to sign “Troy”) before uttering his name into the microphone. The Minari and Pachinko star then stayed onstage to hold Kotsur’s brand-new statuette, freeing him up to sign his acceptance speech with both hands. “I want to thank all the wonderful Deaf theater stages where I was allowed and given the opportunity to develop my craft as an actor,” Kotsur signed as his interpreter, Justin Maurer, audibly choked up off-camera. “This is dedicated to our Deaf community, CODA community, disabled community. This is our moment.”
Heder, who is hearing, also brought up an ASL interpreter when she accepted her Oscar for best adapted screenplay. And co-host Amy Schumer signed “I love CODA; it’s my favorite movie” during the opening monologue and “good night” at the end of the evening. The ceremony also featured a number of other accessibility accommodations for the in-house audience and those at home, and Liza Minnelli used a wheelchair to present best picture alongside Lady Gaga.
“I felt that American Sign Language and the talents of the Deaf community were truly acknowledged tonight on so many levels — the official ASL live stream, Amy Schumer’s use of ASL in her opening and closing remarks, Youn Yuh-jung’s signing of ‘congratulations’ as she announced Troy Kotsur’s win, and Sian Heder’s bringing her interpreter, Heather Rossi, with her onstage so that the world could see her acceptance speech translated in ASL,” Deaf advocate and film executive Delbert Whetter tells The Hollywood Reporter. “One of the more profound sights for me was was seeing nearly everyone in the audience doing the ‘deaf applause‘ on multiple occasions — witnessing industry leaders in the room fully embrace what is such a fundamental part of Deaf culture and ASL fills me with so much hope for the countless deaf and disabled filmmakers and performers who are out there waiting in the wings.”
Another medical condition played a prominent role in the most-discussed moment of the night: Will Smith slapping Chris Rock after the presenter made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head. The actress has alopecia, an autoimmune disorder that causes hair loss, and some people on social media have called Rock’s comment ableist.
The night began with Ariana DeBose picking up her expected best supporting actress statuette, making West Side Story Anitas two-for-two at the Oscars. In January, DeBose told The Hollywood Reporter that she was initially hesitant to take on the role that made Rita Moreno the first Latina performer ever to win an Academy Award. “I don’t know if there’s space for my interpretation, because I would have to play her as a Black woman,” DeBose said then. But in taking up the mantle, DeBose has now become the first Afro-Latina Oscar winner.
“You see an openly queer woman of color Afro-Latina who found her strength in life through art, and that is what I believe we’re here to celebrate,” DeBose said onstage Sunday night before going on to quote one of West Side Story‘s most famous lyrics. “So to anybody who has ever questioned your identity or you find yourself living in the gray spaces, I promise you this, there is indeed a place for us.”
Encanto‘s Yvett Merino became the first Latina producer to win an Academy Award with the movie’s animated feature win. “I am so proud to be part of a film that puts beautiful diverse characters front and center,” said the longtime Disney Animation Studios employee of Encanto, which had not one but two songs performed during the ceremony, chart-topper “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” and best song nominee “Dos Oruguitas,” which was sung in Spanish by Sebastián Yatra.
Other Oscar winners from historically excluded backgrounds included The Power of the Dog‘s Jane Campion, who in 1994 became the first woman to receive a best director nomination and now is the third woman to win; Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson for best documentary feature Summer of Soul; and King Richard star Smith for best actor.
“This is not about me, this is about marginalized people in Harlem that needed to heal from pain,” Thompson said. “But just know that in 2022, this is not just a 1969 story about marginalized people in Harlem.”
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed to Variety that Chris Rock has “declined to file a police report” following an altercation with Will Smith at the 94th Academy Awards. Smith took to the stage during the 2022 Oscars and slapped Rock after the comedian made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith.
A full statement from the Los Angeles Police Department reads: “LAPD investigative entities are aware of an incident between two individuals during the Academy Awards program. The incident involved one individual slapping another. The individual involved has declined to file a police report. If the involved party desires a police report at a later date, LAPD will be available to complete an investigative report.”
While presenting best documentary feature at the Oscars, Rock made a joke about Pinkett Smith’s shaved head by comparing it to the look of Demi Moore in the 1997 movie “G.I. Jane.” Rock said he couldn’t wait to see Pinkett Smith, who has alopecia, star in “G.I. Jane 2,” which led Smith to go up on stage and slap Rock. Smith returned to his seat and shouted, “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!”
Smith won best actor for “King Richard” following the incident and issued an apology in his tearful acceptance speech. The actor said, “I want to apologize to the Academy. I want to apologize to all my fellow nominees. This is a beautiful moment and I’m not crying for winning an award. It’s not about winning an award for me. It’s about being able to shine a light on all of the people.”
In between the slap and his best actor win, Smith met with Denzel Washington. The “Glory” and “Training Day” Oscar winner offered Smith the following advice: “At your highest moment, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you.”
Pinkett Smith announced last year she shaved her head after struggling with alopecia. After Rock made his “G.I. Jane” joke, Jada was seen not laughing and rolling her eyes. The actor wrote on Instagram last year, “Now at this point, I can only laugh… y’all know I’ve been struggling with alopecia…Mama’s gonna have to take it down to the scalp so nobody thinks she got brain surgery or something. Me and this alopecia are going to be friends … period!”
Source: Variety