How ‘SNL’ Addressed Will Smith Slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars

Saturday Night Live had to address the Oscars slap, of course. The sketch show is always topical, but it’s debatable whether it overdid these jokes or not. Here’s a look at all the references throughout the whole episode.

Saturday Night Live has room for a lot of jokes in its 1-and-a-half-hour episodes, and it’s easy to overdo it with one topic. Some might say that the show was judicious with its references to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars, while others thought it had already been over-saturated. Either way, it’s undeniable that the slap was a cultural touchstone and will be unavoidable for weeks or even months to come, for better or worse. It makes sense that SNL had to get some early shots in now.

The jokes were concentrated in the show’s most famous segments – the cold open, the celebrity host monologue and the “Weekend Update” interlude. Other than that, there was only one sketch with a reference to the slap. You can find them all below, and watch the whole episode now on Hulu or Peacock. SNL will be back this weekend with another new episode at 11:30 p.m. ET on NBC.

‘Fox & Friends’ Cold Open

The 8-minute cold open sketch was a parody of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, which featured a joke about the slap at around the 4-minute, 55-second mark. It came when the hosts FaceTimed former President Donald Trump – played once again by cast member James Austin Johnson – and asked him his opinion of the controversy. Pretending to confuse reality with fiction, this version of Trump seemed to think that Smith was his character from the movie Hitch.

Jerrod Carmichael’s Monologue

This week’s host, Jerrod Carmichael took on the slap reluctantly in his monologue. Like many users on social media, he seemed frustrated by the fact that we all can’t stop talking about the slap even if we have nothing new to say about it. He said: “Can you believe it’s been six days?… Doesn’t it feel like it happened years ago? Doesn’t it feel like it happened when we were all in high school? Like, it feels like it happened somewhere between Jamiroquai and 9/11.”

‘Weekend Update’ Part 1

“Weekend Update” co-hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che did not hold back when they took on the slap. They dedicated nearly five minutes to punchlines about the slap, tying it in with other news of the week.

‘Weekend Update’ Part 2

Later on, “Weekend Update” returned to the topic of the slap with Kenan Thompson playing O.J. Simpson. He joked about controlling rage with obvious references to Simpson’s own criminal allegations. 

‘Seat Fillers’

Finally, one 4-minute sketch was all about the Will Smith slap. It featured cast member Chris Redd playing Smith and host Carmichael playing a seat-filler trying to make an impression on him. This one, in particular, joked about Smith’s apparent laughter before the slap.