It was expected that Saturday Night Live would tackle the Oscars slap between Will Smith and Chris Rock, and they did—but from an audience’s point of view.
In the sketch, a seat filler (Jerrod Carmichael) approaches Smith (Chris Redd) to tell him how big of a fan he is and asks for a selfie before the onstage incident. But after the slap, the seat filler’s excitement dissipates and he tries to distance himself from the actor who is pretending everything is normal.
“So where are you from?” Redd’s Smith asks Carmichael before shouting, “keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth” to an off-camera Rock.
When Smith brings up doing the selfie, Carmichael declines saying, “I deleted my phone.”
Not long after, another seat filler (Kyle Mooney) returns wondering what he missed. While Mooney scrolls through his phone, Smith introduces himself and asks for his name. But Mooney quickly realizes what he missed and tries to distance himself replying, “They didn’t give me one.”
By the end of the sketch, a happy-go-lucky Smith is dancing to his 1997 hit “Gettin’ Jiggy with It,” which he did in reality at the Vanity Fair Oscars party after taking home the Best Actor win for his leading role in King Richard.
On SNL this week, the slap was a central topic and was featured in the Weekend Update, cold open and in Carmichael’s opening monologue.
