John Oliver: ‘No one wants to hear’ O.J. Simpson’s take on Will Smith’s Oscars slap
“Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver inevitably weighed in Sunday on the biggest TV spectacle of the last week: Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards.
More specifically, he zoomed in on O.J. Simpson weighing in on Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards.
During the latest installment of his HBO program, the English American comedian deemed the infamous slap “a moment that has since formed thousands of terrible takes” — including and especially Simpson’s.
After the film academy announced disciplinary proceedings against Will Smith, new accounts dispute whether Smith was asked to leave after he slapped Chris Rock.
Simpson — the former NFL player acquitted on charges of killing ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and friend Ron Goldman in the 1990s — shared his thoughts on the encounter late last month in a video posted to Twitter.
“Will was wrong,” Simpson said while on vacation in Delaware. “I understood the feeling. In my life, I’ve been through a lot of crap and ... every comedian in the country had an O.J. routine, and don’t think I wouldn’t wanna [have] slapped a couple of those guys.
“But ... it’s human. I didn’t even think that was all that egregious. ... If I would have done that in front of a billion people watching around the world, they would have given me life without.”
Everything we know about the infamous moment at the 2022 Oscars, from the history leading up to the onstage shocker to today’s latest developments.
After Simpson got roasted by Twitter for opining on the incident, Oliver joined the chorus of people saying, “No one wants to hear from you on this.”
“Especially when you seem to be coming live from the COVID patio of a Señor Frogs,” he added on “Last Week Tonight.”
‘SNL’ has become a way station in processing the awful nonsense of the real world into the manageable nonsense of comedy. The Oscars were no different.
“Just sit this one out. Think of this situation like a rowdy bachelorette ordering a mimosa: We want as little juice involved here as humanly possible.”
Over the weekend, “Saturday Night Live” also lampooned Simpson for adding his voice to the slap discourse. In a “Weekend Update” segment, Kenan Thompson impersonated Simpson and spoke with co-anchor Michael Che about the event — and nearly lost his temper multiple times in the process.
“You know me — I hate conflict,” Kenan’s Simpson told Che. “In my humble opinion, Will Smith maybe overreacted by slapping Chris Rock. I mean, Will, I don’t wanna say that you got rage issues, but if the glove fits.”
However, he added, “Sometimes jokes can go too far — especially when it’s about a man’s family. Because, like Will Smith said in his speech, ‘Love will make you do crazy things’ — allegedly.”
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