Oscars Producer Opens up About What Happened Behind the Scenes After Will Smith Slapped Chris Rock

Oscars 2022 producer Will Packer is sharing what went down behind the scenes of the 94th Academy Awards after Best Actor winner Will Smith slapped comedian and presenter Chris Rock on stage for telling a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Packer revealed in an interview with ABC News’ TJ Holmes airing on Friday’s Good Morning America that the Los Angeles Police Department was standing by to arrest Smith after the incident. 

“That is an absolute fact,” Packer said. “The LAPD made it clear: ‘We will do whatever you want us to do, and one of the options is that we will go and arrest him right now.’” Packer, like many audience members, initially “thought it was a bit” when Smith got up from the audience and slapped Rock.

“Once I saw Will yelling at the stage, [it] was such vitriol,” he recalled. “I remember thinking: ‘Oh no, no no, not like this. Not like this.’ But I’ve got people, everybody’s still in my ear, you know, saying: ‘OK, what are we doing on camera two? Is he still up there? Are we doing the best documentary category?’ And Chris was keeping his head when everybody was losing theirs.”

‘But my heart at that point was just in my stomach, because of everything about it and what it represented and what it looked like and who was involved,” he added. “All of that was just – I never felt so immediately devastated like I did in that moment.” When Rock walked off the stage after presenting, Packer asked him if Smith had really just hit him, to which the comedian responded, “‘I just took a punch from Muhammad Ali.’ It’s exactly what he said, as only Chris can, you know. He was immediately in joke mode, but you could tell that he was very much still in shock.”

Officers were immediately on the scene, Packer said, and were willing to arrest Smith if Rock had decided to press charges – a decision Packer also said he would have supported. “I made that clear, like, ‘Rock, you tell me, whatever you want to do, brother,’” the producer said. “The LAPD came and needed to talk to Chris. And so they came into my office and they were laying out very clearly what Chris’ rights were. They were saying: ‘This is battery. We will go get him. We will go get him right now, you can press charges, we can arrest him.’”

Rock insisted he was “fine,” and while Packer’s co-producer, Shayla Cowan, told Smith that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences was about to remove him from the ceremony, he refused. “I immediately went to the Academy leadership that was on-site and I said: ‘Chris Rock doesn’t want that,’” Packer shared. “I said: ‘Rock has made it clear that he does not want to make a bad situation.’” 

Smith would go on to win Best Actor for his role in King Richard, tearfully apologizing in his acceptance speech to The Academy and his fellow nominees. The following day, the actor issued an apology on Instagram, telling Rock publicly that he was “out of line” and “wrong.”