The Batman star Zoë Kravitz has shared her thoughts about the controversial Will Smith Oscars slap to her 8.2 million Instagram followers.
“Here’s a picture of my dress at the award show where we are apparently assaulting people on stage now,” she captioned a photo of her wearing a pale pink Saint Laurent dress on the Oscars red carpet.
“And here is a picture of my dress at the party after the award show - where we are apparently screaming profanities and assaulting people on stage now,” she wrote under a photo posted shortly afterwards of her rocking a white open back column gown by Saint Laurent to the Vanity Fairs after party.
In the 24 hours since her post, Kravitz has received a deluge of criticism from social media users accusing the star of not wanting to be associated with Black Culture and referencing a 2015 interview she did with Nylon magazine. “I identified with white culture, and I wanted to fit in,” Kravitz told Nylon at the time. “I didn’t identify with Black culture, like, I didn’t like Tyler Perry movies, and I wasn’t into hip-hop music. I liked Neil Young.”
Kravitz’s name has been trending on Twitter with many quoting the 2015 article while others suggested the actress should have simply kept her opinions to herself. One twitter user wrote: “She should have just sat there and ate her food”, while another proclaimed: “zoe kravitz lost all her twitter hype in just 30 minutes”.
But the daughter of rock star Lenny Kravitz and actress Lisa Bonet wasn’t alone in her condemnation of Smith’s actions on Sunday, she was joined in her disapproval by actor Jim Carrey and director Judd Apatow.
If you don’t know by now (seriously, how?), Smith stormed onto the stage during the 94th Academy Awards ceremony after comedian Chris Rock made an unsavoury joke that mocked his wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia condition. He then proceeded to slap the presenter, before returning to his seat shouting, “Keep my wife’s name out of your f**king mouth.”
“They’ve heard a million jokes about them in the last three decades. They are not freshman in the world of Hollywood and comedy. He lost his mind,” said Apatow in a now-deleted tweet.
However, other celebrities have pointed out that Smith was defending his wife, while others used the occasion to speak out against the violence and the type of comments Black women and other marginalised people often are forced to endure in the name of “comedy.”
“Here’s the thing,” global superstar Nicki Minaj tweeted. “And this is such an AMAZING - EYE OPENING example of it... The husband gets a front row seat to his wife’s pain… he’s the 1 consoling her… drying her tears behind closed doors when those cameras go off. Social media has made ppl feel that these ‘husbands’ won’t ever run into them in real life.”
“You just got to witness in real time what happens in a man’s soul when he looks over to the woman he loves & sees her holding back tears from a ‘little joke’ at her expense,” she added. “This is what any & every real man feels in that instant. while y’all seeing the joke he’s seeing her pain”
While Whoopi Goldberg said on ABC’s The View, “I just think it was a lot of stuff, probably, built up. Because 2016, ’17, ’18, ’19, ’20, ’21 brought a lot of jokes [about Smith and Pinkett Smith] — some of them really low, some of them OK. I think he overreacted,” said the 1986 Best Actress Oscar winner. “And in 2016 — Chris was also the host of the Oscars that year — and it was funny. I would have been a little annoyed. ... But I think he had one of those moments where it was just like, ‘G— it. Just stop. Just stop.’ And you got all the pressure of hoping that you win and trying to keep your face. I get it.”
On Monday, Smith released an apology to Rock, expressing remorse over his actions.
“Violence in all of its forms is poisonous and destructive. My behavior at last night’s Academy Awards was unacceptable and inexcusable. Jokes at my expense are part of the job, but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally,” Smith wrote. “I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris. I was out of line and I was wrong.
“I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be. There is no place for violence in a world of love and kindness.”
