‘SNL’ Cold Open, Opening Monologue Balloon Painting Will Smith, Chris Rock Slap – The Hollywood Reporter

In the chilling opening of the April 2 episode of Saturday Night Live, Fox & Friends Hosts Steve Doocy of Alex Moffat, Brian Kilmeade of Mikey Day and Ainsley Earhardt of Heidi Gardner mentioned James Austin Johnson’s President Donald Trump speaking Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars on May 27. 3.

“I saw the slap. I love the slap,” Johnson’s Trump said. “I am very impressed with my Hitch. Quite help Hitch. I always knew Hitch had an arm. Return Pursuit of Happiness, he is taking the machine on and off the subway. I think it’s great. You know, they slept in the bathroom in that movie. So sad. So sad. It was also a sad night for Hitch. It was a very sad night. ”

Then presenter Jerrod Carmichael also addressed the slap in his opening monologue, saying he wouldn’t talk about “it”. Despite focusing almost his entire monologue on the incident, he never directly mentioned the Oscars, the Academy, the Smith, or the Rock.

“I won’t talk about it,” he began his monologue. “I’ve talked about it enough. Talked about it. Think about it. I don’t want to talk about it. You can’t make me talk about it”.

He goes on to ask the audience if they want to talk about it, if they aren’t sick of it, and if they can believe it just happened six days ago.

“Six days. This happened a week ago. Doesn’t this feel like it happened years ago?” Carmichael said. He added that on Monday it was very enjoyable and Tuesday it still interesting, but on Wednesday, “I want to kill myself,” he joked.

The presenter also said that, although he did not intend to talk about this moment in his monologue, SNL honcho Lorne Michaels specifically asked him to discuss it because “the country needs to heal.”

Carmichael continues to talk about being gay in his new HBO special, Rothaniel.

“[This] was good but an expected response in New York,” he said, referring to the applause from the audience. “That’s really why I live here. If you say you’re gay in New York, you can ride the free bus and people just give you pizza. Honestly, if you’re gay in New York, you can host Live Saturday night. This is the gayest thing you can do. “

He continued, “We’re basically like a dream about Andy Warhol craze right now. ‘National healing’? I’ve been gay for 48 hours, man? I had to do a lot of gay work before I could heal the nation. I have a lot of homophobic cousins ​​- I can’t even mend my family.”

The comedian ended his opening monologue by asking former President Barack Obama, who “made us all hope and change,” to come back and address “that problem.” Carmichael added, “The nation needs to heal.”

In a later sketch of the episode, Carmichael and Chris Redd recreated the slap. “Seat Filler” Carmichael went to Redd’s Smith, told him he was a big fan of him, and asked him to take a selfie. In the background, Rock’s voiceover can be heard GI Jane joked about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who shaved her head and has been open about her struggles with hair loss.

“I don’t want to sound corny, but you’re like my hero, man,” Carmichael told Redd’s Smith. “This is the most amazing man in my life. I’m talking to Will Smith. Chris Rock just took the stage. “

Redd’s Smith told Carmichael he would be right back and up on stage to slap Rock, returning to his seat shortly after as if nothing was wrong.

“By the way, I like your tuxedo,” Redd told Carmichael. “Look good, feel good,” he continued before turning his attention to the stage and shouting, “Get my wife’s name out of your mouth,” just as Smith shouted at Rock at the awards ceremony. Oscars on Sunday.

In “Weekend Updates”,“Colin Jost and Michael Che spent a few minutes of their weekly segment on Smith slapping Rock, which Jost joked set a ‘precedent for having to defend your wife at awards ceremonies'”.

Che later protested Smith’s best actor acceptance speech, in which he said that “love will make you do crazy things”.

“Love will make you do crazy things,” says Che. “You know what also makes you do crazy things? Crazy.”

Che continued, “But I understand where Will comes from. I mean, you can’t expect him to sit there and watch another man jump all over his wife – without an NDA. ”

Jost said: “Yesterday, Will Smith resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He wouldn’t, but then Jada looked at him. If Will Smith is expelled, he will join a small group of Academy expulsions, including Bill Cosby, Roman Polanski, and Harvey Weinstein. Or, as they are also known, lifelong bad boys. “

Che then asked if everyone could stop pretending that everyone knew Pinkett Smith suffered from alopecia areata, joking that out of all he had heard about Pinkett Smith and Smith’s personal lives, it was unbelievable. that everyone keeps everything.

“Selfish, as a comedian,” he added, “I’m tired of people putting their insecurities on our joke intentions. I mean, I can’t joke about being cold outside without someone shouting back, “Stop messing around with my little penis.”

Kenan Thompson participated Weekend update like OJ Simpson to give his opinion on how the slap has divided Hollywood.

“In my humble opinion, Will Smith might overreact by slapping Chris Rock,” Thompson said. “I mean, Will, I don’t want to say you have a rage problem, but if the glove fits.”

The episode’s musical guest was Gunna, who joined Future on stage.

These come the day after Smith announced that he would be resigning from the Academy for slapping Rock at the awards ceremony. After the slap, Smith shouted at the comedian from his seat in the front row, telling him not to say his wife’s name out of his “damn mouth”.

At the end of the awards show, Smith returned to the Oscars stage to accept the best actor award for his performance in King Richard. During his speech, Smith emotionally apologized to the Academy and its nominees for his actions. But it wasn’t until Monday that Smith apologized to Rock in an Instagram post.

Rock has mostly remained silent about what happened, telling an audience at his comedy show in Boston on Wednesday that he was “still processing what happened,” but that at some point Someday, he will “talk about it. And it will be serious, and it will be fun. ”