Amy Schumer Reveals Baldwin Shooting Joke That Wasn't Allowed At Oscars
During a recent stand-up show, Amy Schumer revealed the Alec Baldwin joke she was told not to say at the 2022 Oscars ceremony. Schumer co-hosted this year's celebration of cinema with Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall, and while the night was filled with important firsts for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, much of the attention since has been on a controversial moment that happened during the broadcast. Just before winning best actor for his performance in King Richard, Will Smith strode up on stage and slapped Chris Rock after the comedian made a poor joke about Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Aside from that, though, the Oscars were filled with exciting wins for movies like CODA and Dune.
The Oscars effectively summed up the past year in movie-making, but there was one major event that went by with little mention. Last October, Baldwin was on the set of the Western film Rust when, during rehearsal, he accidentally discharged a gun and fatally struck cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Since then, there has been an extensive inquiry into the incident, and Baldwin has pushed back against those who claim he is responsible. Hutchins was included in this year's In Memoriam segment at the Oscars.
Per Variety, Schumer was performing a stand-up comedy set in Las Vegas on Saturday, April 2 when she revealed a Baldwin joke she wasn't allowed to say at the Oscars. "Don’t Look Up is the name of a movie? More like don’t look down the barrel of Alec Baldwin’s shotgun," Schumer quipped. She also said she had jokes about Joe Rogan and James Franco, but they were deemed too controversial. Schumer slipped in an additional reference to the Smith incident as well, adding, "I wasn’t allowed to say any of that [at the Oscars], but you can just come up and [slap] someone."
As of last month, Baldwin has returned to acting for the first time since the Rust shooting, starring in a pair of Christmas movies titled Kid Santa and Billie's Magic World. The news of that came just one week after Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed pushed responsibility for the shooting back on Baldwin, stating he should have never been pointing the gun in Hutchins' direction. As of this time, Baldwin has not been charged with anything, though he has been named in a lawsuit from Hutchins' family.
Though Schumer evidently has no problem revealing her controversial Oscar jokes to the world now, it is very safe to say that keeping the mention of Baldwin out of the ceremony was smart. Schumer got in plenty zingers, particularly regarding Don't Look Up and Being the Ricardos, but to fire off a joke about a tragedy like the Rust shooting would be in poor taste. The Oscars audience both at the Dolby and at home did not need to be faced with unsavory quips, and Hutchins' family did not deserve to hear that tragedy off-handedly mentioned via joke.
Source: Variety