Oscar-winning actor Will Smith stirred up major controversy on Sunday night during the Academy Awards when he threw hands at host Chris Rock for poking fun at his wife’s reported hair-loss condition.
“Jada, I love you, ‘G.I. Jane 2,’ can’t wait to see it,” Rock joked.
Smith, upset by the joke, marched on stage and slapped the host in what appeared to be an unscripted moment.
“Will Smith just smacked the sh-t out of me,” Rock said in disbelief.
“Keep my wife’s name out of your f-cking mouth!” Smith yelled as he sat down.
The stunning and subsequently viral moment came just moments after Rock joked about the Smiths’ open-marriage arrangement, which the couple laughed at.
Moments after the infamous slap was heard around the world, Twitter began buzzing with content that will surely dominate the conversations of many a Slack channel on Monday.
“They need to send Will Smith to move with his auntie and uncle in Bel-Air,” conservative commentator Ben Shapiro tweeted.
“So I guess Hollywood is bringing slapstick back…” Ilya Shapiro mused.
“Jussie Smollett is saying Will Smith hit him too,” comedian Sam Morril tweeted, mocking the “Empire” actor’s elaborate hate-crime hoax used to smear Trump supporters.
While the Oscars are often scolded for overlooking or trivializing the real problems facing normal Americans, Twitter creators used photos of Smith’s slap to relate the out-of-touch moment to daily trials such as skyrocketing gas prices.
Others used the picture-perfect moment to lament the woke-ification of sports.
“I just wanna know about the game,” one user tweeted.
While the virtue-signaling celebs who attended the Oscars seemed to have forgotten all about Covid-19 and the theater that came with the virus, the meme creators did not.
At least one user even invoked a photo of President Joe Biden as Rock, getting slapped in the face with a piece of pizza — and reference to his embarrassing and gaffe-ridden visit to Poland.