The “Ambulance” director shared his reaction to the now-infamous Oscars slap between Will Smith and presenter Chris Rock during the March 27 awards ceremony. Bay, who directed Smith in both “Bad Boys” and its 2003 sequel, told Yahoo! Entertainment that Smith’s altercation seemed out of character. See below. “Everyone was texting me, ‘Did you see it? Did you see it?’ First of all, it’s wrong to begin with,” Bay said. “But that’s all people are talking about and I don’t really care. Hollywood gets very self-absorbed. There are babies getting blown up in the Ukraine right now. We should be talking about that. I really don’t care. It wasn’t right.” Bay added, “I’ve worked with him. He is not that guy. I’ve never seen him lose his cool like that. I thought it was set up because I saw the smirk. I’ve been on set when Will screws with people, joking with people. Listen, it was a slap. It wasn’t a punch. He’s very good at fighting. He’s trained at that. But it’s wrong to begin with. And then I knew the yell was right. He was mad.”
The “Transformers” auteur isn’t the only Hollywood figure to think the slap is getting blown out of proportion: Daniel Radcliffe said he is “so dramatically bored” of all the varying opinions of the altercation, and John Oliver slammed O.J. Simpson adding to the discussion on “Last Week Tonight.” Meanwhile, Rock broke his silence about the attack during the first stop of his sold-out comedy tour, starting at the Wilbur in Boston on March 30. “I don’t have a bunch of shit about what happened, so if you came to hear that, I have a whole show I wrote before this weekend, and I’m still kind of processing what happened,” Rock said. “So at some point I’ll talk about that shit. And it’ll be serious, and it’ll be funny.” Smith has since apologized to both the Academy and presenter Rock in an Instagram statement. A formal disciplinary review by the Academy is currently underway. Smith also resigned from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
“I don’t really care… There are babies getting blown up in Ukraine right now. We should be talking about that.” pic.twitter.com/OZgKipQQ2L — Kevin Polowy (@djkevlar) April 4, 2022 Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
