New Video Shows Jada Pinkett Smith Reacting To Will Smith Slapping Chris Rock At The Oscars
Is she laughing?
Cellphone video shot from the Oscar crowd on Sunday seems to show Jada Pinkett Smith laughing after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock.
It's unclear who shot the video but it's been circulating online since Wednesday, and it clearly shows a different angle on the most talked-about moment at the 94th Academy Awards.
The slap happened after Rock made a joke about Pinkett Smith's baldness, which is caused by a medical condition called alopecia. Will Smith wasn't happy with the joke, so he went up on stage and slapped the comedian on live TV.
The new video shows the rest of the incident playing out from behind where Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and Lupita Nyong’o are sitting. It picks up right after Smith smacked Chris Rock, just as he is returning to his seat.
You can’t see Pinkett Smith’s face very well, but she pitches forward and appears to laugh along with the audience when Rock says: “Will Smith just slapped the s--- out of me.”
Smith then shouts: “Keep my wife’s name out your f---ing mouth!”
The video zooms out and it’s hard to see Pinkett Smith’s expression as her husband is yelling, but she looks at him the first time he says it and then watches Rock through the rest of the exchange.
Finally, Rock declares it “the greatest night in the history of television,” and Pinkett Smith can be seen reacting by briefly raising her hands as if in a shrug.
The slap has been dominating entertainment headlines all week, and there's been plenty of speculation about why Smith got so mad that he actually struck Rock.
Will Smith won the Best Actor Oscar for King Richard later in the night. He used that speech to apologize to the Academy and his fellow nominees, but did not issue a public apology to Rock until Monday.
Rock briefly addressed the incident at a comedy show on Wednesday but he did not go into detail about it.
Pinkett Smith called for "healing" in a brief Instagram post after the slap, but she hasn't gone into detail about it either.
The Academy is reviewing the incident and Smith could face punishment.