Jimmy Kimmel will discuss Will Smith and Chris Rock slap at Oscars 2023: ‘It’s got to come up’

Jimmy Kimmel will reprise his role as Oscar presenter at the 2023 awards, and the comedian says Will Smith will definitely be on the topic.

The late night talk show host, 55, shared that the slapping incident between the King Richard actor, 54, and Chris Rock, 57, needs to be discussed at some point, but that he doesn’t want to “tell it lightly” to make’ .

“It has to be brought up somehow,” Kimmel said Additional after being announced as the host of the 95th Annual Academy Awards.

At the 2022 Academy Awards, Smith stormed onto the stage and punched Rock in the face, after joking about the shaved head of his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, 50, yelling “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!”

Kimmel said of the incident, “You know, I don’t necessarily want to take it lightly because it wasn’t [light] to comedians. You know, comedians love it.’

“It’s like it’s one of those things that isn’t funny to a group of people who find everything funny, you know?” continued the comedian.

Kimmel previously discussed the now-infamous moment during a segment on his show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, in March, calling it “so shocking.”

“It’s a part of our lives forever now, we’ll never stop talking about it.” It was so shocking. The only thing I can really compare it to is when Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ears.”

He added that the “weirdest thing was that Will Smith initially laughed” at the joke Chris made about his wife Jada: “But then he must have looked and saw that Jada wasn’t amused and said, ‘uh oh, I can only better do something. And boy did he do something.”

Kimmel also brought up that no one in the audience did anything to help the situation, and later Smith applauded after winning the Best Actor trophy for his performance in King Richard.

‘Nobody did anything. No one lifted a finger. Spider-Man was there. Aquarius was there. Catwoman, all sitting on their hands. No one helped Chris Rock,” he said.

He also praised Rock’s response: “Chris Rock handled it so well when he got slammed onstage at the Oscars.” He didn’t even flinch when Will slapped him. I would have cried so hard.’

Following the backlash from the incident, Smith resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and was banned from all Oscars-related events for the next 10 years.

Elsewhere in his Extra interview, Kimmel added that it’s natural for the show to want to highlight big events from the previous ceremony: “If they read the wrong winner one year when I presented the Oscars, we had to do it the next year.” mention. .’

The incident refers to a blunder at the 2017 ceremony, when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway mistakenly announced La La Land as the best picture winner. The error was eventually corrected and Moonlight was announced as the actual winner.

When Kimmel returned to the Oscars the following year in 2018, he happily poked fun at the mistake.

“If you hear your name called this year, don’t get up right away. Give us a minute. We don’t want anything more,” he joked during his monologue.

The 95th Academy Awards will take place on Sunday, March 12 at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles.

The funny man is now tasked with cranking up the anemic ratings of the once-watched awards show, which attracted just 15.36 million viewers last year and a record low of 10.4 million the year before.