Oscars | Outraged reactions after the slap of Will Smith to Chris Rock

(Los Angeles) After the stunned effect on Sunday evening in Hollywood, the slap that Oscar-winning superstar Will Smith dealt to American comedian Chris Rock on the stage of the Oscars 2022 provoked mostly outraged reactions on Monday.

It was a joke by Chris Rock about the shaved head of Jada Pinkett Smith, the wife of Will Smith suffering from alopecia — a disease causing severe hair loss — that sparked the scandal. Will Smith then goes on stage and slaps him. “Don’t say my wife’s name with your fucking mouth!” “, he even launches once sat down.

The strongest condemnation came from American actor and director Judd Apatow in a tweet that he later deleted, but comedian Mia Farrow took up: Will Smith “could have killed him. He simply lost control of his anger and his violence […] He lost his mind. »

Mia Farrow herself, more consensual, defended the comedian Chris Rock, who made “only a joke, as he knows how to do”.

The star player of the San Francisco Golden State Warriors, basketball player Stephen Curry, also said he was “still in shock, like everyone else”.

The sportsman paid tribute to Denzel Washington who, Sunday evening at the Oscars, comforted Will Smith by saying to him: “In your most intense moments, be careful, this is where the devil arises! »

For British writer Bernardine Evaristo, whose father is Nigerian, Will Smith missed an opportunity to set an example, especially for African-Americans: while he is “only the fifth black in nearly 100 years to win an Oscar for a title role and the first in 16 years, (he) resorts to violence instead of using the power of words to defeat Chris Rock”, she denounced on Twitter.

“And then he invokes God and the love that would have made him do this,” she further castigated.

” Lack of respect “

In fact, Will Smith apologized Sunday — to the Academy of Oscars, but not to Chris Rock — saying, in tears, that “love makes you do crazy things,” while condemning “people who disrespect you”.

The 53-year-old American actor, hyperpopular in the United States and abroad, received the Oscar for best actor for King Richarda comedian performance in which he plays Richard Williams, the trainer father of tennis champions Serena and Venus Williams, in whom he inculcates a certain number of moral values.

In the film, the character even lets himself be beaten, without answering, by young thugs from a Californian suburb.

Some are however lent their support to Will Smith. Former One Direction singer Liam Payne reacted to reporters: “I think whatever he did, he had the right to do it. »

The elected Democrat of Massachusetts Ayanna Pressley, also suffering from alopecia, thanked him in a tweet since deleted. “Congratulations to all the husbands who defend their wives with alopecia in the face of ignorance and everyday insults,” she wrote.

And Jamaal Bowman, another elected Democrat, to conclude in a tweet also erased: “A lesson to be learned: do not joke with the hair of a black woman. »