Oscars Producer Reveals Chris Rock 'Freestyled' Joke That Prompted Will Smith Slap

Oscars producer Will Packer is breaking his silence on the slap heard 'round the world. In a Friday interview on Good Morning America, Packer clarified that while the Academy wanted to "physically remove" Will Smith after he slapped Chris Rock, he insisted the King Richard star should remain in the Dolby Theatre, as per Rock's request.

Packer also revealed that Rock was "freestyling" when he made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith's shaved head (the star suffers from alopecia), confirming reports that the comic went off-script with the remark. "I said, 'Watch this. He's going to kill.' Because I knew he had an amazing lineup of jokes that we had," he told GMA's TJ Holmes. "We had him in the prompter, and ultimately he did not get to one joke. He didn’t tell one of the planned jokes. He was just immediately freestyling. But I'll tell you, if there's anyone you want going in front of a live audience and riffing off the cuff, it's Chris Rock."

After the shocking moment — which, like many viewers, Packer initially thought was a bit between the two stars — Packer approached Rock offstage, who joked that he "just took a punch from Muhammad Ali."

The Oscars producer went on to say that he approached Academy members in the room to inform them that "Chris Rock doesn't want" Smith to be removed, as they had initially wanted to do. "I said, 'Rock has made it clear that he does not want to make a bad situation worse,'" he recalled. "That was Chris' energy. His tone was not retaliatory, it was not angry, so I was advocating what Rock wanted in that time which was not to physically remove Will Smith at that time because as it has now been explained to me, that was the only option at that point. It was explained to me that there was a conversation that I was not a part of to ask him to voluntarily leave."

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.