Marc Maron on Oscars slap: Will Smith 'lost his f***ing mind'
Marc Maron says Will Smith was "f***ing wrong" to hit Chris Rock at the Oscars, calling it "the most profound display of self-sabotage I've ever seen." As for Rock, he "handled it pretty f***ing great."
The comedian weighed in on his WTF With Marc Maron podcast about the Best Actor winner storming to the stage and slapping presenter Rock over a G.I. Jane joke about Jada Pinkett Smith's shaved head on Sunday. Rock apparently didn't know Jada has alopecia; Will said in his apology "a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally."
Maron said he was watching the show live when he saw Rock "assaulted on camera in front of the world by Will Smith." Like many, he found it "baffling" at first. "It was like ... What? What the f*** just happened?"
Maron feels the conversation shouldn't be about what Rock said or Will defending Jada or anything else.
"No," he said. "It was f***ing wrong. You don't go up and smack someone in the f***ing face — anywhere."
He said "all that happened in terms of the discussion is: The guy that has spent the last 30 years of his career managing his personality to be one of the nicest guys in showbiz and have everyone like him lost his f***ing mind. That's what happened."
Maron said he doesn't know what's going on with Will or "how far back it goes. I don't know if it's relative to a past thing with Chris. I don't know if it's relative to his marriage. To the pressure he's been under. To what he exposed about himself in his memoir. I don't know what caused it. But in that moment, that guy left reality ... and decided impulsively and without much reflection to go onstage and hit a peer on national television."
He continued, "That's what happened: A guy f****ing snapped. It can happen to anybody, I guess. Not great timing... A guy snapped and it was a bad time for it to happen and it was wrong."
He said, "It was the most profound display of self- sabotage I've ever seen" and said, "The whole thing was disturbing."
Maron said Rock "handled it pretty f***ing great" under the circumstances.
He said he didn't think Rock — whom he's seen in recent weeks at the Comedy Store as Rock prepped for his tour, which kicked off last night — was trying to make an alopecia joke.
"I guarantee you Chris didn't know she had alopecia," he said. "I guarantee you that Chris was handed a paper with a bunch of jokes by the writers... He had a writer, probably, for the awards show. He said: 'I want to take some shots when I go out. What do you got?' He saw a bunch of jokes and these were the ones he was carrying into his head when he went on stage."
He also spoke about the risk of being a comedian. He said "comedy is always scary" and he doesn't remember a show where "the possibility of me getting hit wasn't a possibility."
"If you're a poker — I'm a poker, Chris is a poker — if you keep poking, sometimes you poke the wrong [person], and you're gonna get poked back. Something's gonna happen ... The risk of being a comic of a certain type, you know that danger is there."
However, "you just don't really assume that in a room full of peers that on a live televised night to honor people that some guy you've known for 30 or 40 years is going to pop and lose his f***ing mind for a few minutes."
At the end of the day, "Chris Rock should have felt more safe on that stage than he felt anywhere in his life."
