After the well-publicised and a controversial 94th Academy Awards, the biggest night of the American music industry was held on Sunday, April 3rd in Las Vegas, Nevada. A reference of Will Smith and Chris Rock’s dispute also found its way at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards, the host of the ceremony Trevor Noah started by mentioning the slap of Will Smith from the Oscars. The Daily Show host Noah joked about the infamous episode in a subtle way by implying, “Don’t even think of this as an award show. It’s a concert where we are giving out awards, we will be listening to music, dancing, sing, keeping people’s names out of our mouths and we are going to give people awards all throughout the night. So let’s get straight into it.”
The line of “keeping people’s names out of our mouths” is a hint to Will Smith at the Oscars 2022, he was caught shouting obscenities from his seat at comedian Chris Rock as soon as Smith slapped him after he mocked Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head. It was not only Trevor Noah who mentioned the slap but also another host at the Grammy’s called Questlove who recently bagged an academy award in the Best Documentary Feature category at this year’s Oscars. Questlove won his award soon after Smith and Rock drama and in the Grammys he too joked, saying, “Alright, I’m gonna present this award and I trust that you people will stay 500 feet away from me.”
The Oscars’ slap is something which has dominated the news all week and has resulted in Will Smith resigning from the Academy on April 2nd this year.