Last month’s Academy Awards featured three hosts handling the ceremony, with comedians Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Regina Hall running through various jokes throughout the telecast.
That included Schumer appearing in the crowd after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock onstage and cracking a joke asking if she missed anything while she was away.
While Schumer, Sykes, and Hall had some funny lines, Schumer recently shared that she had a particular joke she was ready to share at the Oscars ceremony, but her lawyers didn’t approve it for the live show.
Amy Schumer shared joke she couldn’t tell at the Oscars
Sometimes jokes cross the line, and at the Oscars, Chris Rock’s joke about G.I. Jane seemed to be enough to upset Jada Pinkett Smith and, ultimately, her husband, Will Smith.
As many viewers saw during the live telecast and in uncensored video footage online, Smith walked up to the stage and smacked Rock for the remark about his wife’s bald look before returning to his seat and shouting at Rock.
During the incident, Amy Schumer wasn’t on stage or nearby, but she alluded to it in an Oscars segment shortly after.
“Ugh, I’ve been getting out of that Spider-Man costume. Did I miss anything?” Schumer joked while standing in front of cast members from The Power of the Dog.
That joke generated laughs from the audience and a fist bump from fellow comedian Tiffany Haddish.
“There’s like a different vibe in here,” Schumer joked, getting more laughs, with the camera also revealing Smith cracking up.
This past Saturday, Schumer made her first public appearance since co-hosting the Academy Awards, as she performed a show at Las Vegas’ Mirage Theater for the Aces of Comedy series.
According to Hollywood Reporter, she shared some jokes she had ready to fire off at actors James Franco, Joe Rogan, and Alec Baldwin, but lawyers indicated they were too much to use at the Oscars.
“Don’t Look Up is the name of a movie, more like don’t look down the barrel of Alec Baldwin’s shotgun,” Schumer said. “I wasn’t allowed to say any of that, but you can just come up and [clock] someone.”
Schumer called Oscars incident a ‘bummer’
Soon after the awards show, host Wanda Sykes shared her thoughts about the Will Smith incident and its handling.
“I just felt so awful for my friend Chris. It was sickening. I physically felt ill, and I’m still a little traumatized by it. And for them to let him stay in that room and enjoy the rest of the show and accept his award—I was like, ‘How gross is this?'” Sykes commented while appearing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
“This is just the wrong message. You assault somebody, you get escorted out of the building, and that’s it. For them to let him continue, I thought it was gross,” she said.
According to Complex, Amy Schumer took to her Instagram page after the incident and commented on the matter, including saying she was “triggered and traumatized.”
This past weekend, she expanded upon the topic during her set at Las Vegas Mirage Theater.
“I don’t even know what to say about the Oscars,” Schumer said. “I have no jokes about it. All I can say is that, I don’t know if you saw this, but Will Smith slapped Chris Rock. Did that cross your newsfeed?”
“I was kind of like, feeling myself,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oooh, somebody’s monologue went well.’ And then, all of a sudden, [Smith] was making his way up and just [motions a slap].”
Schumer went on to say the incident was “just a f**king bummer.”
“All I can say is that it was really just sad. It says so much about race, about toxic masculinity, it’s just, everything. It was just really upsetting,” she told the crowd during her standup act.
Smith’s Oscars incident seems to have helped Chris Rock in a big way, as tickets for his Ego Death World Tour started surging following the slap. The actor and comedian received a standing ovation at his first show since the incident in Massachusetts.
Meanwhile, Smith resigned from the Academy following the incident and has been quiet following his statements about the matter.