Jay Leno talks Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars

Jay Leno was within the viewers at Los Angeles’ Dolby Theatre for the Oscars final month when Will Smith, sad with a joke presenter Chris Rock had simply made about Smith’s spouse, Jada Pinkett Smith, walked onstage and slapped him. Though that second was stunning for everybody there — and the tens of millions watching — it was what occurred afterward, when Smith twice yelled at Rock to, “Preserve my spouse’s identify out your f***ing mouth,” that caught with him.

“To me, the factor that is most annoying wasn’t the slap, as a result of he was sort of smirking after he slapped [Rock],” the previous host of The Tonight Present advised the Palm Seashore Every day Information forward of a gig in West Palm Seashore, Fla. “It was the yelling of the obscenities. Then you definitely go, ‘Whoa. What is going on on right here?’ That is actual anger.”

Smith, whom Leno considers a “good man,” remained on the venue and went on to win the Greatest Actor award for his flip in King Richard. Throughout his acceptance speech, he spoke about defending his household — the joke mocked his spouse’s alopecia — and apologized to the Academy and to the remainder of the viewers. Rock declined to press expenses, so Smith was not arrested. A day later, Smith publicly apologized to Rock, and occasion officers stated they deliberate to research.

To Leno, the latter appeared pointless, because the slap was finished in full view of the cameras.

“What are you investigating?,” Leno stated. “It needed to be probably the most recorded assault in historical past. I noticed the again of his shoe, I noticed Chris’s ear. There have been so many cameras on this incident. What are you investigating? I do know typically issues are simply what they look like.”

Many different individuals who had been within the room, together with co-host Wanda Sykes, who described the violence as “sickening,” whereas co-host Amy Schumer known as the incident “traumatizing.”

Inside every week of the slap, Smith resigned from the Academy. Its Board of Governors, which incorporates movie veterans similar to Whoopi Goldberg, Steven Spielberg, Ava DuVernay and Laura Dern, introduced April 8 that it had voted to ban him from Academy occasions for 10 years. They didn’t take again his Oscar.