Oscars Producer Will Packer Claims Chris Rock Said He ‘Got Punched by Muhammad Ali’ After Will Smith Slap
usmagazine.comWhile Chris Rock immediately went into “joke mode” after being slapped by Will Smith at the 2022 Oscars, there was some underlying emotion.“I said, ‘Did he really hit you?’ and he looked at me and goes, ‘Yeah!
I just took a punch from Muhammad Ali.’ He was immediately in joke mode but you could tell that he was very much still in shock,” show producer Will Packer said during a Friday, April 1, interview on Good Morning America, noting that he initially thought the encounter between Rock, 57, and Smith, 53, was a planned “bit.”Smith notably played Richard Williams, the father of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, in the King Richard biopic.
The role earned him the trophy for Best Lead Actor during the Sunday awards show. Rock’s monologue aired ahead of Smith’s eventual win.“I wasn’t concerned at all,” Packer, 47, told GMA host T.J.
Holmes. “I figured, ‘OK, you know, he’s going to say something, come at him, something funny is going to happen because that’s the nature of Chris, that’s the nature of Will so let’s see what happens.’ … Once I saw Will yelling at the stage with such vitriol, my heart dropped and I remember thinking ‘Oh no, oh no, not like this’ and Chris was keeping his head when everybody else was losing theirs.”During the 94th annual Academy Awards on Sunday, March 27, the Everybody Hates Chris alum joked about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, joining the cast of a potential G.I.
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