Will Packer, the lead producer of the Oscars telecast that was thrown into upheaval after the actor Will Smith went onstage and slapped the comic Chris Rock, mentioned Friday that after Mr. Smith had been requested to go away the ceremony, he urged the Academy management to not “bodily take away” him from the theater in the course of the reside broadcast.
Mr. Packer mentioned he had discovered from his co-producer, Shayla Cowan, that there have been discussions of plans to “bodily take away” Mr. Smith from the venue. So he mentioned he instantly approached academy officers and informed them that he believed Mr. Rock didn’t need to “make a foul state of affairs worse.”
“I used to be advocating what Rock needed in that point, which was to not bodily take away Will Smith,” Mr. Packer mentioned. “Because it has now been defined to me, that was the one possibility at that time. It has been defined to me that there was a dialog that I used to be not part of to ask him to voluntarily depart.”
Mr. Packer gave his first interview since Sunday’s broadcast to “Good Morning America” on ABC, the community which additionally broadcasts the Oscars. Within the interview, Mr. Packer mentioned that Mr. Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair was unscripted “free-styling”
“He didn’t inform one of many deliberate jokes,” he mentioned of Mr. Rock.
Mr. Packer additionally mentioned he was not fully certain till he spoke with Mr. Rock again stage that Mr. Smith had truly hit the comic.
“I simply took a punch from Muhammad Ali,” Mr. Packer recalled Mr. Rock telling him.
He additionally mentioned that Mr. Smith reached out and apologized to him the morning after the Oscars. And he praised Mr. Rock for having saved his cool. “Chris was maintaining his head when everybody else was dropping theirs,” he mentioned.
“I’ve by no means felt so instantly devastated,” Mr. Packer mentioned.
