Trevor Noah makes passing reference to Will Smith’s Oscars slap at the Grammys
Grammy Awards host Trevor Noah didn’t let the opportunity to joke about Will Smith’s infamous Oscars slap of Chris Rock pass him by during Sunday night’s ceremony.
The “Daily Show” host and Grammys emcee opened the 64th Grammys with a passing reference to the controversy.
“Don’t even think of this as an award show,” Noah said about the Grammys. “It’s a concert where we are giving out awards, we will be listening to music, dancing, sing, keeping people’s names out of our mouths and we are going to give people awards all throughout the night. So let’s get straight into it.”
At the 2022 Oscars on March 27, Smith walked up to the stage and slapped Rock across the face after the comedian made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s appearance. (Pinkett Smith, Smith’s wife, has alopecia and Rock focused on her shaved head to land a punchline about “G.I. Jane.”) Upon returning to his seat, Smith shouted at Rock to “keep my wife’s name out of your f–king mouth.”
Noah wasn’t the only person at the Grammys to reference Smith. Questlove, who won Best Documentary at the Oscars – the award Rock was presenting when the slap occurred – also made brief mention of the incident.
“All right, I am going to present this award and I trust that you people will stay 500 feet away from me,” Questlove said while announcing Song of the Year. “As they say it is far better to give than to receive. Well, I’m not so sure about that because last Sunday it felt pretty good to receive.”
The fallout from Smith slapping Rock has been well-documented. On Friday, Smith announced he had resigned from the academy, but the group will decide on his punishment when the board of governors reconvenes on April 18.
Rock, meanwhile, has kept relatively quiet about the event. During his stand-up show in Boston on March 30, the comedian said, “I don’t have a bunch of sh– about what happened, so if you came to hear that, I have a whole show I wrote before this weekend. I’m still kind of processing what happened. So, at some point I’ll talk about that sh–. And it will be serious and funny,” he said.
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