By: Liv Miller

This year was the 94th annual Academy Awards. Each year the Oscars is broadcasted worldwide celebrating and giving recognition to the best films of the year, and the people behind them.

This year’s Oscars were pretty eventful, I mean, just ask anyone. First, let us address the elephant in the room, because I’m sure if you hear anyone talking about this year’s Oscars, there’s a pretty good chance this event is the topic of discussion: Will Smith. If you were tuning in on your television this year you saw it all go down live, but if not I will give you a breakdown of the events.

Chris Rock, who is an famous actor and comedian, gets up to present an award, but not before he cracks a few jokes. Now, it is not uncommon for celebrities to jab at other celebrities through some light hearted comedy, especially at award shows. But for Chris Rock, these jokes seemed to come back and slap him in the face, literally.

When on stage, Chris happened to make a joke about Will Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. The joke that was made poked fun at the fact that Jada had recently shaved her head. Something that Chris did not know, was that Jada allegedly made this decision because she had been struggling with alopecia, a disease that makes your hair fall out. After the joke was made, the camera panned over to Will and Jada, who appeared to be rolling her eyes.

We then see Will walk up on stage making his way to Chris, where he then hits Chris then proceeds to walk away and down back to his seat. Chris seemed to keep his composure despite the fact he just got slapped in the face by Will Smith. When Chris tries to move on we hear Will from the audience yell, “Keep my wife’s name out of your ***** mouth!”

This series of events continues to confuse the audience and the viewers for the next remaining hours of the show, leaving people not knowing whether or not it was all a joke or not. Later in the show, we see Will Smith on stage again, only this time to receive the Oscar for best actor in the film ‘King Richard’.

Will Smith later took to Instagram to issue a public apology to Chris Rock, the Academy Awards, and the film crew for ‘King Richard’. The lengthy apology consisted of Smith saying, “My behavior at last night’s Academy Awards was inexcusable.” As well as “Jokes at my expense are a part of the job, but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear, and I reacted emotionally.”

Chris Rock turned down the opportunity to press charges, but Will still managed to suffer the consequences of his actions. The academy has made the decision to ban Will from attending the Oscars for 10 years, though he will keep his recently earned award.