The 94th Oscars are finally over, and the night was filled with a lot of highlights and record-setting winners. However, the moment everyone is talking about has nothing to do with the awards at all. In the strangest moment of the night, a confrontation between now-Oscar winner Will Smith and Chris Rock led to the King Richard star hitting the famous comedian across the face.
Rock was presenting the award for Documentary Feature, and things went downhill when Rock started making his typical jokes, one of which was directed at Smith’s wife and fellow actress Jada Pinkett Smith — more specifically, her hair, shaved bald for the awards to accommodate for her alopecia, a condition that causes hair loss. Rock referred to Pinkett Smith as "GI Jane 2", and that's where things escalated, with Smith rising from his chair to approach the stage and slap Rock, swearing in such a way that was cut for American audiences but aired uncensored in other countries.
This was a shocking moment, to say the least, as it came out of nowhere, and some wondered whether the moment was staged. However, that assumption was killed rather quickly as The Oscars’ audio was muted soon after the weighty hit. It remained that way for a good thirty seconds or so, leaving viewers stunned and guessing what Smith was shouting at Rock after he hit him, but the audio that was muted in America quickly surfaced online. The clean version of what Smith said to Rock boils down to Smith yelling at Rock to keep his wife’s name out of the comedian’s mouth. Rock joked after that, saying that this was "the greatest night in the history of television."
Smith would later win his well-deserved Best Actor award for his role in King Richard. In his acceptance speech, he would apologize and joked about hoping The Oscars would have him back next year. This all kind of sucks, because this was supposed to be Smith’s moment — one of the most celebrated actors in Hollywood was finally getting his due. It was still kind of that, but it is hard not to think about this one night-changing moment.
After weeks of one Oscars controversy after another, this definitely felt like a particular way to end this very wild award season, and you can watch this moment in all its uncensored glory down below: