Unless you’ve been living under a rock, we all know what infamously happened at the 94th Academy Awards ceremony; Will Smith stormed the stage and slapped Chris Rock because of a joke made at the expense of Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
The incident caused quite the controversy; some applauded Smith for standing up for his wife – Pinkett Smith suffers from alopecia and Rock’s joke seemed to dig at that medical condition – while others are adamant that violence is never okay and Smith should be arrested.
While Smith has now publicly apologised, – during his Best Actor acceptance speech and via an Instagram post – multiple celebrities like Jim Carrey, Zoe Kravitz and Jaden Smith (Smith and Pinkett Smith’s son) have weighed in on the whole fiasco, which has led the internet to vie for controversial comedian Ricky Gervais to comment.
Gervais, who has hosted the Golden Globes five times, is renowned for making ‘offensive’ jokes at various celebrities’ expense, and while he has faced backlash for these jokes many times, he’s never been physically assaulted.
Gervais even told Today in an interview earlier this year that he’d never host the Academy Awards because he wouldn’t be allowed to make the harsh jokes he would want to – although it seems Rock was given that allowance…
“[The Golden Globes] said I can write my own jokes and say what I want, no rehearsals. The Oscars would never. And if the Oscars said that, then I’d do it… but that would never happen.”
Plus, hours before Smith hit Rock, Gervais actually slammed the Oscars on Twitter for being hypocritical as it’s “diverse” and “progressive” except when it comes to “poor people”.
Now, the comedian, also known for The Office and Derek – to Twitter’s delight – has Tweeted about the whole incident between Smith and Rock…. Sort of.
Michael McKean, the Emmy-nominated actor, Tweeted, “Thought experiment: same scene, same joke, but replace Chris Rock with Ricky Gervais.”
This Tweet gained multiple responses ranging from, “…If everybody Ricky Gervais insulted at the Golden Globes had gone up and slapped him, there’d have been a line to the back of the auditorium and the show would’ve lasted all night,” to “Will Smith probably wouldn’t have gone up on the stage. But if he did, Ricky Gervais would’ve sprinted out of the building.”
Gervais simply replied:
“You’re basically asking if he would slap a much heavier, angrier, drunker man.”
Gervais also Retweeted a short clip from an old episode of The Office where his character mentions alopecia.
While we’ll never know what would’ve happened if Gervais had been the one to present during the Oscars or joke about Pinkett Smith’s hair, let’s just be honest…
This is the one time we’re happy Gervais wasn’t involved in a controversial joke as the whole Smith and Rock altercation – while we don’t condone either Rock’s insensitive joke or Smith’s deplorable violence – definitely made the Oscars the most exciting it’s been in years.
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