Five days after the slap heard ‘round the world, seemingly everyone has chimed in about what happened at last Sunday’s Oscars, from the stars in the Dolby Theatre to the “dramatically bored” Daniel Radcliffe to the viewers at home. Will Smith has said his part, and The Academy has said theirs. And finally, the one man everyone wants to hear from has spoken out: Oscars producer Will Packer. In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Packer reveals just how close the Academy came to ejecting Will Smith from the Oscars following his assault on Chris Rock, and just who stayed the organisation’s hand.
As the interview opened, Packer narrated his experience watching the interaction from backstage, noting that Rock’s remarks were completely ad-libbed. “He didn’t tell one of the planned jokes,” Packer said. “He was just immediately free-styling. But I’ve got to tell you, if there’s anybody that you don’t worry about going out in front of a live audience and riffing off the cuff, it’s Chris Rock.”
Then, after Rock cracked a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia, Smith took the stage and slapped Rock across the face before returning to his seat. “I thought this was part of something that Chris and Will were doing on their own,” Packer said. “I thought it was a bit, like everybody else. I wasn’t concerned at all. But once I saw Will yelling at the stage with such vitriol, my heart dropped. I just remember thinking ‘Oh no. Oh no. Not like this.’”
Packer debriefed with Rock backstage immediately after the incident; “you could tell that he was still very much in shock,” the producer remembered. Then, Packer and Rock met with the LAPD. “They came into my office, and they were laying out very clearly what Chris’ rights were,” Packer said. “ They were saying, ‘This is battery. We will go get him. You can press charges; we can arrest him.’ As they were talking, Chris was being very dismissive of those options. He was like, ‘No, I’m fine. No, no, no.’ Even to the point where I said, ‘Rock, let them finish,’ and he said, ‘No.’”
When Rock declined to press charges, the LAPD departed, but the conversation about how to discipline Smith didn’t end there. Right before the Best Actor award was set to be announced, fellow producer Shayla Cowan clued Packer into a conversation she’d had with Academy leadership about the organisation’s intent to remove Smith from the theatre.
“I immediately went to the Academy leadership that was on site, and I said, ‘Chris Rock doesn’t want that,’ Packer said. “‘Rock has made it clear that he does not want to make a bad situation worse.’ That was Chris’ image. His tone was not retaliatory; his tone was not aggressive and angry. I was advocating what Rock wanted at that time, which was not to physically remove Will Smith. As it has now been explained to me, that was the only option at that point.” Packer went on to call Rock a "hero," crediting him with keeping the ceremony from devolving into chaos.
Of course, Smith wasn’t removed from the ceremony, and went on to take home the trophy for Best Actor. But the story doesn’t end there, according to Packer. “Will Smith reached out to me the next morning,” Packer revealed in the interview. “He apologised. He said, ‘This should have been a gigantic moment for you.’ He expressed his embarrassment, and that was the extent of it.”
According to ABC News, Smith reportedly apologised to Academy board members in a Zoom call. Following that meeting, the Academy announced that Smith had violated its code of conduct, causing him to face “suspension, expulsion, or other sanctions.” ABC News reports that the Academy will make a decision about Smith's punishment by April 18—stay tuned as we continue to update this developing story.
Adrienne Westenfeld is the Books and Fiction Editor at Esquire, where she oversees books coverage, edits fiction, and curates the Esquire Book Club.
