Will Smith has been banned from attending Oscars ceremonies for the next 10 years after slapping Chris Rock in the face on stage at the awards show
The announcement was made Friday by the Academy, which said the decision was based on “the unacceptable and harmful behaviour we saw Mr. Smith exhibit on stage.”
A member of the Academy called Will Smith’s 10-year Oscar ban a “toothless penalty” and says he should give-up his award for best actor.
In an op-ed published in Variety, Veteran screen and stage actor Harry Lennix compared Smith’s penalty for smacking Chris Rock over a joke “an extended time out for a playground bully”
Smith resigned from the Academy before it levied its decade-long ban on the actor, but Lennix says the punishment did not fit the crime.
Will Smith slapped Chris Rock after he cracked a bald joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who suffers from alopecia.
Lennix says that moment “lays bare the shallowness of Hollywood morals” and QUOTE “brutality stripped the entire evening of its prestige,”
He believes Will Smith created an existential crisis for the Academy, so he should return his award for best actor.
