Type keyword(s) to search

The View in Review

Whoopi Goldberg Insists Will Smith Will Keep His Oscar After Slapping Chris Rock

The EGOT winner labeled Smith's outburst "a mistake" and suggested her co-hosts should lay off the King Richard star.
posted by Claire Spellberg Lustig
Monday 3/28/2022 at 11:52AM EDT
  • Whoopi Goldberg was the lone co-host to offer a quasi-defense of Will Smith today on The View. (Photos: ABC)
    Whoopi Goldberg was the lone co-host to offer a quasi-defense of Will Smith today on The View. (Photos: ABC)

    It was the slap heard 'round the world. On Monday morning, the women of The View had much to say about Will Smith leaping onstage at the Oscars and hitting Chris Rock for joking about Jada Pinkett Smith's shaved head. While Sunny Hostin and Ana Navarro condemned the altercation as "a show of violence," Whoopi Goldberg chalked it up to "a mistake" and insisted his Oscar will not be taken away. "We're not going to take that Oscar from him," said the Academy member. "There will be consequences, I'm sure, but I don't think that's what it [will be]."

    As could be expected, Smith's violent outburst anchored The View's Hot Topics on Monday morning. Joy Behar was first to speak, but she seemed to miss the point of the discussion when she complained that "comedians are in danger everywhere" after last night. "They want us to be edgy. They want us to go out there and say things that other people are just thinking. They want us to take a risk, and then they get mad. That's what's happening lately. People get mad," she said, before launching into a story about how audience members at her show once threw popcorn at her. "I walked off. That would be a more appropriate, to me, a more appropriate response if you're upset about something ... But to actually hit somebody, it was shocking, frankly."

    "Well, hitting somebody is a crime, right?" replied Navarro. "It is the crime of assault on national TV." The guest co-host noted that while Rock's joke about Pinkett Smith, who shaved her head after suffering from alopecia, was "in very poor taste," it doesn't excuse Smith's reaction. "Nothing, nothing — nada, cero – condones violence in this form. Nada," she said.

    Hostin agreed, and she ripped Smith for his "immature, childish, and violent" reaction to Rock, "who took the high road in his response." The former prosecutor went on to say that by living publicly, the Smiths have opened themselves up to "jokes" and "commentary" about their lives. "When you live publicly, you don't have the right to all of the sudden decide to execute violence," she said. "I have to say, that was a show of toxic masculinity. If he was offended and felt emasculated by Regina Hall's joke or by Chris Rock's joke, you don't act out in violence. That is not a show of love. That's a show of violence."

    In the least surprising moment of the discussion, Whoopi offered a half-hearted condemnation of the moment and stopped short of calling out Smith. "I just think it was a lot of stuff probably built up," she said, referencing Rock's jokes about Pinkett Smith at the 2016 Oscars. "I think he had one of those moments where it was just like, 'GD it! Just stop! Just stop!' And you've got all the pressure of hoping that you win and trying to keep your face. I get it. Not everybody acts the way we would like them to under pressure. Some people just snap. He snapped."

    After the commercial break, Hostin said she was "surprised that [Smith] was not escorted out" and even received a standing ovation when he won the Best Actor Oscar for King Richard. When she questioned whether "the Academy is going to let him keep it," Whoopi insisted they would, particularly because Rock has said he's not pressing charges.

    "I will just say this," said Whoopi, after some more back and forth. "He made a mistake. Everybody — overreactions, mistakes were made. You can only beat somebody, and I'm talking from experience — people will beat you for weeks. We get it. When we make a mistake, we know! We know we made a mistake. So I just want to put that out because as hard as we're beating folks, they're beating themselves."

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

    TOPICS: Will Smith, ABC, 94th Academy Awards, The View, Chris Rock, Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Oscars


More Will Smith on Primetimer: