If these trophies could talk …
Nearly a year after the “slap heard around the world,” Will Smith seems to be poking fun at the 2022 Oscars incident in a new video on TikTok.
On Tuesday, the “Emancipation” star posted a “duet” with a TikTok user who prompts others on the app to ask an inanimate object what it thinks of you.
“This works because everything has consciousness,” reads the caption of the original video by TikToker Sam Rossi.
“You can pick up a pen and ask it how it sees you or what it thinks of you,” she continued, “and you will get an answer in your mind from your intuition. You can ask your car what it thinks of you, you can even ask money what it thinks of you.”
In the duet, the 54-year-old actor reaches off camera to pick up an Academy Award for Best Actor, which he won for his role in “King Richard” during that fateful March 27, 2022 ceremony.
He looks as though he’s about to ask his golden statuette a question just before he ends the video — which has 112,500 likes and 1.6 million views as of Wednesday morning.
Smith slapped 94th Academy Awards host Chris Rock, 58, after the comedian made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair — which Smith took as a jab at his 51-year-old wife’s struggle with alopecia. The tone-deaf comment inspired the actor to hustle up to the Los Angeles Dolby Theater stage and smack Rock in the face.
The audio was cut and censored for several seconds as Smith returned to his seat. But captions and lipreading by enthralled viewers revealed his message to Rock: “Keep my wife’s name out of your f–king mouth.”
Smith has since apologized to the “Everybody Hates Chris” creator in an Instagram post, characterizing his actions as “unacceptable and inexcusable.”
Pinkett Smith broke her silence soon after. “My deepest hope is that these two intelligent, capable men have an opportunity to heal, talk this out and reconcile,” she said during an episode of her Red Table Talk series on June 1, 2022.
He furthermore announced his resignation from the Academy following the outburst, as the Academy in turn promised a formal disciplinary review.
It was ultimately decided that Smith was banned from appearing at the Oscars ceremony for 10 years following the incident.
The 95th Academy Awards hosted by late-night broadcaster Jimmy Kimmel takes place on March 12.