I am starting to think the Will Smith Chris Rock thing was fake the reasons are

Alec Baldwin shot someone and he's still getting roles.

Smith will be fine.

You may have a point.

Will Smith risked his ~$350,000,000 fortune and ~$40,000,000 a year "salary".

If this was all for more fame and/or his ego is that fragile? Thats not a publicity stunt. Thats a cry for help. Google Howard Sterns take on it all.

Baldwin doesn’t any roles. Quit drinking the cool juice.

Risk his fortune? That is not happening. Who is going to take it?

Will Smith is has 13 films in the works which he is producing according to IMDB. He hired himself as lead actor in three of those films. Is he going to fire himself?

It takes an incredible amount of money to keep a "fortune" going.

I do not think Will Smith would risk his brand, by way of slapping Chris Rock, to increase his wealth. He isnt that dumb.

The sad thing is that it seems 100% real. I think the Smiths are crazy people. I would feel bad for Will but he's kinda doing it to himself at this point. He should divorce her and date a 25 year old actress. His kids will understand.

As soon as I saw a still photo of how far Chris leaned back, I knew it was just slapstick.

I could be wrong. You could very easily be right in assuming that it was not staged. I could see it being real, especially assuming alcohol was probably involved.

As a natural skeptic, my first thought when I hear some news event is "Where's the money?" and "Who benefits?" When you look at this incident through that perspective, my scenario makes sense.

On the other hand, sometimes people just do stupid things on the spur of the moment that they regret later. Maybe that was the case here.

I do not insult everyone who disagrees with me. I tell people they are stupid when they are stupid. Will Smith actually walked up to Chris Rock, unplanned, and open-hand smacked him in the face. Anyone who thinks that was scripted is a complete moron. The Oscars may have benefitted from this (though they are getting criticism for allowing Smith to go up there and get his award), but in no way would a set up like this benefit Chris Rock or Will Smith. Just asinine to believe they would do this. Clear as day watching it too that it was not scripted. Some behaviors and thoughts are carried out only by morons, and those who think this was faked are among that group. What group? MORONS.

You, sir, are CORRECT! (Well, not about the rep thing, but the agreeing with me)

Oddly enough, according to reports, his tickets for his next comedy tour have gone from $45 to $400. I'm actually not super happy to see that...he's got enough money already to not need to benefit financially from this, but I get why the price went up...likely due to increased demand because people want to support him and they likely hope to hear him talk about it.

Chris Rock is still relevant. He's been steadily working as a writer, as a producer, and as an actor. He has 2 movies in post-production right now with a third one just announced. He's worth $60 million. He didn't need this to happen.

Nope. You've got me confused with another...and I'm not kidding or lying.

Just another example of why this site's dumbest poster doesn't reside in Edmonton.

Definitely not fake. Absolutely no reason for Smith to manufacture a controversy and make himself a laughingstock, especially as Smith was just about to win the Oscar. I think what happened is that Smith reacted impulsively when he saw his wife's reaction, came to his senses only after he had already walked onto the stage and made a clown of himself, could not think of anyway to back down while saving face so gave Rock a halfhearted slap. His yelling afterwards was just the cherry on top of a train wreck moment.

1) Take it further to say that you KNOW it's not fake, then you're right.

2) Well, Will Smith is obviously a b!tch, so he went with the b!tch slap. F*ck Will Smith.

Remember when Greg bltchslapped you in the piano challenge?

I have to say that even though the whole context around this tells you that this was real, there are a few elements that suggest otherwise, such as the capture and picture from a moment after where it looks like both guys are smiling, the angle of his hand in the slap, the cover-up of the actual contact by placing his left hand in the way of the camera during the slap, the fact that actors literally practice fake slaps and punches in movies all the time, and here's the big one, Chris Rock's 2005 monologue complains that the Oscars are the only award show in which the participants don't do what they do, they sing at the Grammies, they act out scenes at the Tony's, ..., but they don't act at the Oscars. Well, here it is!

That being said, as much as I'd like it to have been an act, none of the others are treating it that way, and I haven't been able to find a super slo mo version in which there's no contact.

I don't think it was fake as Will Smith was laughing at first at the joke, which makes zero sense if they were going to fake something.

Even to take this further, his acceptance speech could hardly have been better if it were scripted. He had it all tied into the movie he was promoting, and even Chris Rock called him Richard when he was striding toward him on stage. The only mistake there was that he said it was a case of art imitating life when it was life imitating art--if it was real, that is. You'd think it was the movie in which art was imitating life (Richard Williams's life). So, this is either one of the greatest hoaxes or it is (more likely) real. Another point against it being made up is that they had a falling out over the 2016 award comments about Jada not belonging at the Oscars.