Will Smith went from beloved film favourite to Hollywood villain when he slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars last weekend. Has he done permanent damage to his image and career, and what might happen next?
As the Oscars ended on Sunday night, Will Smith may have hoped he had nipped the fallout from his slap in the bud.
His tearful best actor acceptance speech, in which he apologised to the Academy and his fellow nominees and tried to frame himself as a “defender of his family”, received a standing ovation.
He later made a show of posing and dancing with his best actor statuette at the after-show party in classic Big Willie style, as if nothing had happened. Or as if he was relieved to have ridden out the storm.
But when he woke the next morning, the storm hadn’t passed. It only intensified as people took stock of his violent behaviour in the cold light of day.
“It is kind of crazy to think that this one incident could wipe away so many decades of goodwill,” says The Wrap editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman.
“But it was so public, it was so outside of the box. One agent we talked to called it a ‘stunning act of narcissism’. The movie star brand for Will Smith is badly tarnished.”
Her website has published an article asking film industry insiders if Smith’s career is “mortally wounded”.
“The conclusion is, yeah,” Waxman says. “‘Mortally wounded’ is a quote, that’s what one of the agents we talked to called it, and said he’s kind of done as an A-list movie star.
