Will Smith alludes to infamous Oscars slap in TikTok video, wonders what his Oscar thinks of him
They say the recipe for comedy is tragedy plus time. A year after the slap memed across the world, Will Smith seems ready to kinda laugh about it... maybe?
In a TikTok duet video, Smith listens intently as user Sam Rossi a.k.a. Miss Money Working, discusses the benefits of asking an inanimate object, any inanimate object, what it thinks of you.
According to a caption by Rossi, "This works because everything has consciousness."
Will Smith/TikTok Will Smith holds Oscars statue in TikTok video
"You can pick up a pen and ask it how it sees you or what it thinks of you," she says. "And you will get an answer in your mind from your intuition. You can ask your car what it thinks of you, you can even ask money what it thinks of you."
As if you didn't know where this was going, Smith reaches off-camera and picks up his Best Actor Oscar for King Richard and begins to say something when the video ends.
Since the infamous slap at last years Academy Awards, wherein Smith took offense and offensive action after Chris Rock made a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith, Smith has addressed the incident several times, but always in a grave if not emotional tone.
He issued an apology to Rock a day after the slap, calling his behavior "unacceptable and inexcusable," then four months later he released a six-minute video further explaining his actions. "I am deeply remorseful, and I'm trying to be remorseful without being ashamed of myself," Smith said at the time. "I'm human, and I made a mistake, and I'm trying not to think of myself as a piece of s---."
Following the incident, Smith was banned from the Academy Awards for 10 years, with the broadcast of the 95th ceremony airing Mar. 12. Promoting his latest film Emancipation, which had previously been expected to be an awards contender, Smith spoke to EW about how his soured relationship with the Academy may have negatively impacted the project's reception.
"The only discomfort my heart has around that is that so many people have done spectacular work on this film," Smith said. "I definitely lose a couple winks of sleep every night thinking that I could have potentially penalized my team, but I'm going to do everything I can to make sure everyone gets seen in the light that they deserve."
And most recently, Smith teared up speaking with Trevor Noah on The Daily Show, recalling past traumas and "a rage that had been bottled for a really long time."
"That was a horrific night, as you can imagine. There are many nuances and complexities to it. But, at the end of the day, I lost it, and I guess what I would say, you just never know what somebody's going through, you know?" Smith said, adding, "That's not who I want to be."
This latest TikTok, then, strikes a distinctly different tone. And while Will Smith may be ready to joke about the Oscars slap, he joins pretty much everyone else, or at least Rock and Eddie Murphy. After all, laughter heals all wounds. But that still leaves the most important question: What did that Oscar have to say
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