It was to have been a moment of great merriment as deserving actors and others walked to the stage to collect their awards at The Oscars 2022. At the end of the day, however, it was the drama that played out on stage that had many talking long after the Academy Awards ended on Sunday.
The basis of that drama is Chris Rock making a joke about Will Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith. On stage and holding the mic, Chris Rock had joked about Jada’s alopecia, asking when the world would have a GI Jane 2.
For context, GI Jane is a fictional character from a 1997 action film featuring Demi Moore. She’d undergone training as a Navy Seal and, along the line, decided to shave her head to cement her position further, hiding her feminity and ultimately earning the GI Jane tag.
It would have been a harmless joke had the circumstances surrounding Jada’s head been different. Jada had previously noted that she suffers from alopecia and made the conscious decision to have her head shaved due to that disorder.
If she had shaved her head for fun, as some of Jada’s fans had noted, it would not have been much of a problem what Chris Rock said about her head at the Academy Awards (The Oscars).
Interestingly, when he made the joke about Jada’s alopecia, Will Smith was thought to have laughed briefly. But his countenance was thought to have changed when he saw that Jada was miffed with the joke.
UNCENSORED WILL SMITH FOOTAGE AS SHOWN ON AUSTRALIAN TV pic.twitter.com/NcRfdjWxqe
— David Mack (@davidmackau) March 28, 2022
🔴 #AHORA | Video completo: La esposa de Will Smith pareció molesta después de que Chris Rock la llamara "GI Jane 2" en los Oscars. Jada Smith sufre de una condición que causa la caída del cabello y eso molesto a su esposo. pic.twitter.com/3qomXe5JFm
— Mundo en Conflicto 🌎 (@MundoEConflicto) March 28, 2022
At this point, he was thought to have stormed the stage and smacked the comedian on the face. He’d then admonished Chris to stop talking crap about his wife.
The audience was stunned by the drama, but it, fortunately, wasn’t enough to stop the show. Will Smith returned to his seat, and Chris rock tried to make light of the incident. He joked about the slap, stating it was the greatest night in television history.
Will Smith popped on that stage later that evening to pick his first-ever Oscar for his role in KingRichard. His win had his fans stating that it was an evening of double triumphs for him – winning his first-ever Academy Award (as the Oscars used to be calling) and smacking the “loudmouth” who made an “egregious” joke about his wife.
By the way, Chris Rock had previously made a joke about Jada Pinkett in 2016, but the references were not to her alopecia.
