Amy Schumer has said she informed all the people she planned to make jokes about at the 2022 Oscars, including Will Smith, before the ceremony.
The comedian, who co-hosted the event with Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes, made jokes aimed at Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kirsten Dunst.
In a new interview on SiriuxXM’s The Howard Stern Show, Schumer has confirmed that the targets of her jokes were aware of what was coming and approved the digs ahead of time.
“I did reach out to people I was going to joke about before and make sure it was OK with them because I’ve been burned too many times,” she said, adding that she “didn’t want the camera to cut to somebody looking sad”.
“I told the Williams sisters, I told Will, I told Leo,” she said, confirming that they all gave her jokes the green light.
When discussing King Richard on stage – the film about the father of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams that Smith won Best Actor for – Schumer had joked: “After years of Hollywood ignoring women’s stories, this year we finally got a movie about the incredible Williams sisters’ dad.”
Elsewhere in the show, she poked fun at DiCaprio’s habit of dating much younger women and she visited Jesse Plemons in the audience while pretending not to recognise his wife, the Oscar-nominated actor Kirsten Dunst.
Despite Plemons and Dunst being in on the joke, Schumer said she received death threats because of it.
One person who seemingly did not run his jokes past Smith before the ceremony was Chris Rock. The comedian made a quip about Smith’s wife Jada’s shaved haircut, which led to the actor walking onto the stage and slapping him around the face.
As a result, Smith resigned from the Academy and has been banned from its events for 10 years.
