Following Will Smith’s Oscars incident where he slapped onstage presenter Chris Rock, the award-winning actor has been staying out of the public eye. However, he recently popped up in India for his first sighting since the Oscars.
Smith has been in the headlines quite a bit, including the public apology he issued to Rock and his announcement that he’d resigned from the Academy. There have also been reports about canceled or postponed projects that Smith was attached to.
Based on recent images of the King Ricard star from India, it appears he’s moving on and enjoying his life in the aftermath of the headline-making incident, though.
Will Smith spotted in India weeks after Oscars slap
Academy Award winner Will Smith arrived at a private airfield in Mumbai, India, on Saturday, as shown in photos via Page Six. While there, Smith posed for pics with fans and waved to onlookers. Based on the report, Smith was “in good spirits” and visibly smiling much of the time.
Smith’s reason for the trip to India is currently unknown, but it’s possible he was looking to escape the United States public for a while following his Academy Awards incident last month.
During the annual awards show, onstage presenter Chris Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, saying he couldn’t wait for “G.I. Jane 2.” That amused some of the crowd, including Smith, but not Pinkett Smith, who is bald due to having alopecia.
Soon after Rock’s joke, Will Smith left his seat, walked up to the stage, and smacked Rock. After returning to his seat and some remarks from Rock, Smith shouted at him several times.
“Keep my wife’s name out your f**king mouth!” Smith shouted with the live telecast censored.
The show went on, and Smith was awarded Best Actor for King Richard. In his emotional acceptance speech, he choked back tears and apologized to the Academy and others for what he’d done. A day later, he posted a statement on his social media which included an apology to Rock.
Several Will Smith projects have been halted or canceled
Will Smith’s entertainment career has included blockbuster hits like Men In Black, Bad Boys, and I Am Legend, and films garnering him awards and nominations such as Ali, The Pursuit of Happyness, and King Richard.
Soon after the Oscars slap, reports began to surface related to various projects connected to Smith. One of the first to be halted for the foreseeable future was a Netflix film called Fast and Loose, which was “moved to the streamer’s back burner,” per Variety’s report.
Smith was part of a biopic called Emancipation which Apple TV+ and Netflix removed their bids for following the Oscars incident.
National Geographic delayed filming for the series Pole to Pole featuring Smith traveling to the North and South Poles, with an anonymous source cited at Bloomberg saying it would still film this fall.
More recently, a sequel to Netflix’s Bright was canceled, although it was suggested the reason for the cancelation was unrelated to Smith’s Oscars drama.
In addition to that, Smith was set to appear in a fourth movie in the popular Bad Boys series. While he’d already received a large portion of the Bad Boys 4 script, MovieWeb reported that the film’s production had been paused after Smith’s incident.