Jimmy Kimmel was unlikely to shy away from making Will Smith quips at the 95th Academy Awards, but apparently, there were plenty of 'harder' ones that didn't make the cut.
The 2022 Academy Awards took a dramatic turn when Smith stormed on stage and slapped host Chris Rock after he made a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith.
Smith later apologised for his ‘shocking, painful, and inexcusable’ actions, announcing that he was resigning as a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
But while that may have been last year, the infamous moment was discussed frequently in the buildup to 95th edition of the show, so the Academy Awards were of course going to make some fun out of it.
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This year's host Jimmy Kimmel made a quip about the slap in his opening monologue on Sunday (12 March).
Noting how there are five Irish actors nominated this year, he said: "Which means the odds of another fight on stage just went way up."
But Kimmel didn't stop there with the cheeky dig, as he added: "We want you to have fun, we want you to be safe and we want me to be safe.
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“If any person in this theatre commits an act of violence, you will be awarded best actor and be allowed to give a 19-minute speech.” Good job he wasn't in the audience, eh?
If that wasn't brutal enough, apparently, there was supposed to be some even 'harder' jokes about Smith, but they were cut from the show.
Kimmel's wife and executive producer of the ceremony, Molly McNearney, revealed why a lot of the jokes about Smith were cut from the final show.
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Speaking to Variety, she said: "We didn’t want to make this year all about last year.
"I cannot tell you how many Will Smith jokes we had that then we got rid of. We think that only the best for that room made it.
"There were certainly some that went harder, but we didn’t think that was our place to do that. That should be Chris Rock, not us."
Despite the need to be the focus on this year's Oscars, Kimmel did want to make a few nods to possibly the most famous moment in the show's history.
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"We really liked the idea of making fun of the reaction to it last year," McNearney added.
"I think we’re all still in a bit of shock of how that went down and how after watching that violence everyone had to then sit through an acceptance speech."
Topics: Oscars, Academy Awards, Will Smith
Callum Jones