Almost an year after Will Smith ran onto the stage to slap the presenter Chris Rock over a joke targeting his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, this year’s host Jimmy Kimmel says he’s ready for anything to happen including another potential slap.
Kimmel talked about hosting Oscars in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter and when asked about how he would react if there’s another slap, he replied, “You mean, if somebody comes up on the stage and slaps me? Well, I size them up, and, if I’m bigger than they are, I beat the shit out of them on television. And if it’s the Rock, I run.”
Jimmy also responded when asked whether ‘The Slap’ has already become too boring to joke about. “Well, whatever I say about it, it’s going to have to be great, right? Because so much has been said and there’s so much focus on it. I obviously don’t want to make the whole monologue about that, but it would be ridiculous not to mention it,” the star host said.
Kimmel talks about the show’s length and ratings
When asked about the show length he’s trying to hit at the least, Jimmy replied, “Oh, I want to run the show right up to Good Morning America. I want George Stephanopoulos to have to wait eight minutes to come out of his dressing room.”
The star also talked about his expectations on ratings of this year’s show. “I don’t know, it’s not something that I have any control over. We’re excited that there are movies [nominated that] people have seen, so we’re hoping more people watch, but who the hell knows? There’s a lot of focus put on the ratings of these award shows and it’s used as a gauge in some ways, but it has almost nothing to do with the award shows themselves and everything to do with television viewing habits in general,” Kimmel said.