181: When Will Smith Slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars in Real Time

Did you happen to see this moment live on the Oscars telecast? Well, I did, and that's what we're going to talk about on this episode. Welcome to the Indestructible PR Podcast, where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation on this episode. Oh, my. Will Smith punches Chris Rock at the Oscars. This is a special edition of the Indestructible PR Podcast because it is the first time I am doing a podcast in real time when there is a crisis happening. By the time you are listening to this, we are going to be far removed from the Will Smith punch heard around the world during the Oscars. But I wanted to broadcast it in real to give a glimpse into how I watch a crisis unfold, what is happening as a crisis unfolds, and how social and digital media comes into play. And the last piece is. Let's talk about Will Smith and Chris Rock. What does it mean to their reputations? Now, for any of you who did not happen to see the Oscars live, certainly if you're listening to this podcast, you would have to have at least heard about it, otherwise you wouldn't listen to this podcast. But if you didn't hear the exchange between Chris Rock and Will Smith, I'm going to play the uncensored version. However, with the caveat I have to censor some of the clip. Here you go. Oh, Richard. Oh, wow. Wow. Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me.

Keep your wife's name out your mouth.

Wow, dude. Yeah, it was a GI Jane joke. Keep my wife's name out your mouth.

I'm going to.

Okay. Oh, okay.

That was greatest night in the history of television.

Let's talk about how everything unfolded in my house. I am watching the Oscars, but I happen to be watching it while I'm working. Normally, I don't work on a Sunday night, but it's going to be a travel week. It's going to be an incredibly busy week. So I happen to be watching it while I was working. My son was upstairs. We had March Madness on earlier, so there's just a lot of events happening. As soon as I watched the Will Smith Chris Rock altercation, I did like. I assume everyone else at first wondered, is it staged? Am I watching what I think I'm watching? But because it was censored, you knew it had to be real. And just as I was watching it, I could hear my son yell to me, mom. Mom. And then he's Texting me. And this is why I love my son. Of all of my kids, he's the only one who really, really, really, really, really gets my job. He understands the connection between communication, PR crisis, pr, digital social media, and trending news stories. He understands Twitter, Reddit, he gets the whole world. And I said, come here, you know, come to me. And he already had his computer in his hand. And in the video, he had the uncensored video. So it was from the broadcast, I think it was Japan. And he showed it to me uncensored. And then, you know, it's real. Was dropped. Watching it like, oh my goodness. So immediately, as one in PR does, I posted it to TikTok with the help of my son. I said, what are we putting on here? Now I do regret the COVID because I put Will Smith Punches Chris Rock, you know, you want your title as a grabber. But then I put Real Question Mark. And I did that because it was so new. I mean, because I posted it right after it happened and I wasn't quite sure what I was watching. But now that we know that it was real, I kind of regret having that title there. But as such as. Anyway, but since the time that I posted, already has 98,000 views and 237 shares. Now, I've been on TikTok in the public sense for, I don't know, two months maybe. And one thing that I've learned is the views will certainly tell you about which posts people are watching more than other posts. But where the numbers jump exponentially on TikTok is in the shares. It's like compounding interest because if one person is sharing it, it's not one to one, it's one to many. And you don't know how many people are sharing it with their audiences. So people have shared it, people have stitched it, which is they stitch it at the same time. So use my video in a commentary. So that's TikTok. I also posted it to Instagram, where I don't have. I don't put as much energy into Instagram there, but I posted it there. Let me see if I have like comments there. Also right now, 269 views, so that's not a ton. But certainly people are commenting there. And then I also posted it to Twitter. Now when a crisis happens in real time, the first place where I go is, well, it was always Twitter. Now It's Twitter and TikTok. I have to tell you. So TikTok gives me the personal perspective. What are people saying? It's my Water cooler social media network. It's the person on the street social media network. Twitter certainly has the public opinion, but that's where you're going to see your verified press. That's where you're going to see reporters, people who are verified sourced stories. You're also going to find trending stories on Twitter. So if you ever want to follow a crisis in real time, I always tell people to go to Twitter. So the Will Smith Chris Rock piece, so that is definitely trending and there are a lot, lot, a lot of comments about it. And then once you get through. So some of the headlines, you know, will Smith punches Chris Rock on stage. Ooh, Variety has a great photo of Chris Rock's face. So the Japanese television. Oh, so that's the version that I posted to TikTok. Oh, someone posted a photo of everyone at the Oscars when Will Smith assaulted Chris Rock on national television. Oh, my gosh, all the faces. That is a great post. And then here's the full uncensored video. So a lot of people are doing the same thing that I did. There's a lot of memes, there's a lot of comments. It's definitely a trending news story. Oscars was trending anyway. And you're going to notice the big trending stories when there is branded hashtags. And what a branded hashtag is when you see an emoji. So that means there's money, there's a budget behind it. So March Madness has a bracket emoji. The Oscars has an Oscar emoji. That means that there's money. It's like an advertised hashtag, if you will. So if you wrote hashtag Oscars, that emoji was going to come up. And so what that helps is when you want to source all of the OSCR tweets or if you want to see live tweeting, if you want to see reporters tweeting. So many people are doing this with big events. You could go to Twitter spaces, you could follow newspapers, different broadcast sources. Everyone's live, something live, posting live tweeting, live speaking, whatever it is. And there's certainly a lot, lots of commentary about the Oscars. But what happened with Will Smith and Chris Rock, it doesn't even matter who won. And that's, that's the shame for, like Jessica Chastain and everyone else who won Oscars, it is completely overshadowed by what Will Smith did. All right, so that's the Oscars in real time. And for me, I will say before we go to Will Smith and His reputation. I want to give you a taste of just the back end of social media here. So let's go to some of the. Let's go some of the comments. So one person said. Dana, Molly, dying to know what you think. Oh, let me put this right now. I'll reply. Recording podcast right now in real time. Banger right there. Okay. What a child lost respect for Will Smith. What a little baby bro this man won after he punched Chris Rock. What did he say about Jada? So Chris Rock had made a joke about Jada Pickett Smith, Will Smith's wife, and it was a GI Jane joke, which is an incredibly dated joke. Like, I get it's the Oscars and it trends. It skews to older viewers. But Demi Moore in G.I. jane, that's old. Will is going to go live with his aunt and uncle and Bel Air for a while. Someone wrote. Wait, what? How did I miss this? I feel like it was staged. Hoping to get more people to tune in. Yeah, no, it definitely wasn't staged. Everyone on this earth right now is not okay. We are all suffering from this pandemic. Will Smith is not okay. Yeah, right. Everyone is suffering. On the one hand, I like that he defended his wife, but this is extremely excessive. Waiting for the analysis memorial segment appendix. Chris Rock. Rock took it. Lol. Didn't even phase him. That's true. He was. He did. Chris Rock did a very good job. So I'll come back to that in a second. Rip to Will Smith's career. His publicist is going to be busy. PR strategy in this should be interesting. This scene should have won an award for the most cringe word performance. Shame, shame, shame. Let me go to the end here. What is the world coming to? You can't just punch someone for a bad joke. Oh, my gosh. So anyway, so that is the commentary on TikTok right now. And I certainly got a lot of commentary on Twitter as well. Someone wrote, this is disgusting. Anxiously awaiting your post on this. Well, thank you, Randa. You're getting the post in real time and I'm mentioning you in the podcast. Todd Mitchum said, talk about crisis management. He should call you immediately. Both should. Todd, thank you very much. Though highly doubtful. Kerry o' Grady said, oof, I use that. I like that. His publicist is working overtime tonight. Tomorrow's headlines will be brutal. And Carrie had, quote, tweeted one of my tweets because I wrote, will Smith thanked a lot of people for winning the Academy Award. But correct me if I'm wrong. Did he not apologize to Chrisrock. So let's take a listen to the Will Smith acceptance speech for winning the Oscar.

This is a beautiful moment, and I'm not crying for winning an award. It's not about winning an award for me. It's about being able to shine light on all of the people. Tim and Trevor and Zach and Saniya and Demi and Angenou and the entire cast and crew of King Richard and Venus and Serena, the entire Williams family. Art imitates life. I look like the crazy father, just like they said. I look like crazy father, just like they said about Richard Williams. But love will make you do crazy things.

Okay, so while you were listening to that, I was reading more tweets. So Ross said, do you think he will apologize? And I'm going to write. So here's my answer. I think Will Smith will apologize tomorrow on gma. Just the prediction of a humble PR person. That's what I think. I think Will Smith is going to apologize tomorrow morning when he does the rounds. Now, another thing to note is after that happened on stage, apparently during the commercial break, Will Smith walked over to Denzel Washington and Tyler Perry. Both of them were signaling to him just to brush the whole thing off. Will was wiping tears from his eyes, and then he went back and sat down next to his wife, Jada Pickett Smith, who, I gotta tell you, I would love to be a fly on the wall in that car on the way home. All right, so let's now move to what happened to what will likely happen with their reputation or what could happen. Let's start with Chris Rock. Chris Rock just got smacked down on national television, on worldwide television. I don't know what the numbers are. I mean, typically, weren't the Oscars like a billion viewers at one time? I mean, we'll see. I know the numbers are going to be down. There certainly will be up just because it's pandemic, but, man, you never lose that. So Chris Rock now has that rock hanging on him. He's got to carry that rock to his reputation for the rest of his life. So there's that. But it's not going to be negative publicity, but it's just that publicity. He got smacked. No one. No guy wants to be smackdown. No one wants to be smacked down. Now moving on to Will Smith. Wait, Will Smith. We're going to look at it from two sides. Whenever I approach a crisis, I always approach it from the shoes of the person I'm walking in, their shoes. You want to bring empathy into it. How do they feel don't just give your opinion. Think how they would think if you could. So, Will Smith, just in the near future or the near history, it's award season. Award season's crazy hectic. Especially when you're up for Best Actor. Everybody wants you, everybody needs. This guy is probably exhausted, fatigued to the nth degree. There's that. Which are really first world problems. Right? You're tired from doing your press tour during the award season. But he's tired, he's exhausted, he's stressed, he's nervous because he's up for an award. There is, as the person who posted in TikTok, apparently there is history between Chris Rock and Will Smith. Chris Rock had apparently made fun of Jada in the past. And clearly there has to be a straight Will Smith is gonna walk up on stage and punch Chris Rock live. There's gotta be something there that we don't know about, clearly. And he did do it to defend his wife. So you gotta give him something there. He defend. You can't blame a guy for defending his wife. And as someone mentioned in my DMs, I have a lot of DMs as well. I just want to paraphrase what someone wrote in my DMs about Will Smith because I think this is a really good message. And just for perspective, the person who tweeted me is someone who I respect, oh my gosh, immensely. And he happens to be a black male. And what he had said was noting that it's important to show that words have consequences. And that's true. You know, that's true. I absolutely agree with that viewpoint. And just the concern of what this says, how disappointing it is to see that it's two black men. And his concern was that it was reinforcing stereotypes. And that is unfortunate piece of it as well. So this is the part where you can try and get into someone's shoes, but you can't. I can't, as a white woman, get into a black man's shoes, but you can try, right? That's what you need to do. That's where the effort is. So for anyone, Will Smith, Chris Rock, and I bet many, many black people over the past two years, since late May in 2020, it has been a roller coaster of a ride, I would think, for people who are black in this country after what happened to George Floyd, I would think on the one hand, they are truly amazed by how far our culture has come in this acceptance, Black Lives Matter, and how people are noting the achievements of black people currently and in history and overall, just marginalized groups are finally getting the respect that they deserve. But if you are someone who's in a marginalized group, and if you're in a marginalized group such as African Americans and black people like Will Smith, it's just heavier. It's heavier, right? It's heavier. So we can't understand that. So that's why we can't all sit here in judgment of Will Smith. I'm not going to. I'm not going to send judgment of him. But from a PR crisis point of view, what does he do as Will Smith, the actor, as the Hollywood actor? Let's look at it from that perspective. Will Smith, at least to me, he's always the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. This is the guy who is. Now this. This is a story all about how my life got flipped and turned upside down. It's the Prince of Bel Air. He is light, he's bouncy, he's happy. He's a brand. Who's the genie in Aladdin? Will Smith has certainly had serious roles. He's been on Broadway in Six Degrees of Separation. He's had many serious roles. I mean, certainly he just won the Academy Award for it. He's one of those actors who's done it all, but he still has a brand as a nice guy. It'd be different if Sean Penn came up and popped Chris Rock in the mouth. You know, more people would say, all right, but not Will Smith. You know, not Will Smith. So now Will Smith is going to carry this Rock with him for the rest of his career. It's never going to leave him, ever. He's always going to have it. So my prediction, like I typed out, I think he's going to apologize by tomorrow morning. He's going to apologize on Good Morning America either before, but probably on Good Morning America. He's being prepped right now. He's winding down right now. His wife is talking to him right now, confidants, and certainly his team. And they're all going to apologize. So Chris Rock is likely out with his buddies right now. He's out probably talking to his team, his manager, wondering what he's going to say. And he has to be in a wait and see moment. He can't really respond until Will Smith responds. So if I were working with Chris Rock, I would be just sitting. I wouldn't apologize for saying what he said because in context, Chris Rock said a joke. And we don't even know if it's Chris Rock's joke. We can assume Because Chris Rock is a comedian, but we don't even know that he said, you know, what is the most canned humor out there? Award shows. Of all the award shows, what's the most canned? The Oscars. So for Will Smith to go off on an Oscars joke, it just. I just. No, it's. No, I mean, it's the Oscars. Come on, Will Smith. Come on. There's so many other ways that you can defend. Now, Will Smith, what he did do is he started his reputation rehabilitation in the moments after he won the Oscar. Certainly winning the Oscar. Well, that helps because he's Oscar winner Will Smith. And to his credit, he found a way to frame his speech to explain and put into context what happened. Take a listen.

This is a beautiful moment. And I'm not. I'm not crying for winning an award. It's not about winning an award for me. It's about being able to shine light on all of the people. Tim and Trevor and Zach and Sanaya and Demi and Angenou and the entire cast and crew of King Richard and Venus and Sergeant Rena, the entire Williams family. Art imitates life. I look like the crazy father, just like they said. I look like crazy father, just like they said about Richard Williams. But love will make you do crazy things.

So that was the speech, the tearful speech you're going to get from someone who wins their first Academy Award. And it is so interesting how accepting that award for his role as Richard Williams. So he's the father of Venus and Serena Williams in the film called King Richard. And Will Smith said he was a fierce defender of his family, and that's exactly what he did on stage. Now, okay, this just came to me right now. Will Smith knew that Chris Rock was going to be on stage. Will Smith probably knew that Chris Rock was going to say something. Will Smith probably was ready to say and yell something to Chris Rock, but it got the better of him. So I'm going to say I bet Will Smith was going to do something. He was going to yell on stage or do something. But I bet hitting him in the face, that wasn't planned, but I bet this was partially planned. I'm just saying. So in his speech, he did apologize to his fellow nominees. He did say that Denzel Washington did share wisdom with him, as you heard that when the devil comes for you, we better watch it. And he did all that. So his speech was a really, really good speech. But that would have been a moment to apologize to Chris Rock. But I think the reason why he didn't do it is because there is history there and he wasn't going to do it and he probably didn't want to do it because he didn't think it would be genuine because he probably hates the guy. He likely hates this guy. That's my Twitter going off. So more people are replying right now. But so here's where we are right now. I think in the end it's going to hurt Will Smith more than Chris Rock. Both of them are going to deal with it. Smith is going to just have to take his lumps because Chris Rock took his physical lump. Will Smith needs to triage this, like, right away because it's not just about Will Smith as the husband and father. He doesn't need to do any triage for that at all. He defended his wife, he defended his family. He's all set with that. But if he wants to be an actor who's respected and invited back on stage, if he wants to be the nice guy actor, the nice guy brand, he's going to have to fix this. So that's why I think he's going to do it by tomorrow morning. So in each podcast, I always deliver a indestructible PR tip. What can you do? What can we learn from this episode that can help your brand become indestructible? This is no planning. This is just off the top of my head. Building an indestructible reputation is about showing your character. Chris Rock showed his by remaining calm and not attacking or going after Will Smith. Will Smith showed a lack of character, in my opinion tonight by physically assaulting a man on stage. So he's going to have to fix that. So here's your indestructible tip. Temper, fury, emotion, defensiveness. It can cause people to do crazy things in the moment. Fear and anger just create an emotion and sometimes emotion creates a reaction and sometimes that reaction is physical in nature. I'm someone of abuse, physical abuse. I'm a female. It's personal. I think he needs to do a lot to recover from that, though. There are plenty of people out there and I know just from my DMs that think no words comes with consequence. And he did the right thing. So it's definitely in a matter opinion and I respect both sides of it. But if you're in a position where you need to triage something right away, you've done something like this. Now, I don't think many of you listening to this podcast are going to be winning an Oscar and then you have the luxury of going up on stage and giving your speech. But everyone has the luxury of showing their character and taking accountability. If you are someone who is suffering a reputational hit by doing some type of hit or some reaction, negative reaction that you have to reply to, again, this is where you immediately have to go into the indestructible PR response. You need to take accountability for it. You need to take accountability for it right away. Will Smith started to do that, but what Will Smith did is he did the second step, which, if you've heard me say this on the podcast before, you never want to start with the second step in the response framework, because the second step is explain it. It's own it, explain it, plan it, promise it, own it, explain it, promise it. What are your plans? You got to own up to what you did. Will Smith did apologize to the Academy and his fellow actors. So he did do that, but he omitted Chris Rock. And he also did not apologize for just being violent. I felt like that would have been called for, too. But he did explain it, which is step two. He put it all into context that he was defending his family. So there you have it. We don't know what his plans are in the future and how he's going to come away with this, but I do think that he is going to apologize. But I do think we're going to get it with a lot of I did it. But, you know, he's not going to back down on defending his wife. He is not backing down on, on why he did it, but he's just. There's going to be some form of an apology. All right, so that's all for this week on the podcast. I have to go to bed, so thank you for listening. I know this was a different podcast, it's an unscripted podcast, but I wanted to give you a real time reaction to, to a crisis happening in real time. So that's all for this week. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.