‘The View’ Spars on Will Smith at the Oscars: “That’s Not A Show Of Love, That’s A Show Of Violence”

Today on The View, the hottest topic of all was, no surprise, Will Smith’s behavior at the Academy Awards on Sunday night. The actor slapped Chris Rock on stage for telling a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, and later won the Best Actor Oscar, apologizing to the Academy (but not to Rock) for his behavior. Co-host Ana Navarro felt the same as the rest of us when she explained, “At first I thought it was a joke. I think a lot of us thought it was a joke,” saying that she couldn’t believe it was really happening and saying that despite Rock making a “lame” joke at Pinkett Smith’s expense, “Nothing, nada, cero, condones violence in this form. Nada.”

But once everyone figured out that what was happening was Smith’s real-time response to Rock’s joke, they didn’t find the situation funny at all, especially Sunny Hostin. “I was embarrassed for Will,” she began. “I was horrified for Chris Rock. I mean, Will apologized to the Academy, he apologized to his colleagues and the other nominees, but he didn’t apologize to Chris Rock, and I thought Chris was the one that deserved an apology for taking the high road. He was slapped in front of millions of people, internationally, and he took the high road in his response… I think that Will was immature, I think he was childish, and I think he was violent.”

Joy Behar broke in to add, “People are rallying around Will,” to which Hostin replied, “Which is surprising to me. I think that’s something we tell our children not to do, right? Our children would be suspended from school for doing something like that. Use your words. I mean, he’s a Grammy Award-winning rapper, shouldn’t he have been able to say something?”

“Will and Jada Pinkett Smith have lived publicly their whole lives. And when you live publicly, you do open up yourself to jokes, to commentary… They’ve talked openly about their relationship, about their open marriage, they’ve talked openly about Jada’s affair with one of their children’s friends… When you live publicly, you don’t have the right to all of a sudden decide to execute violence. I have to say, that was a show of toxic masculinity. If he was offended and felt emasculated by Regina Hall’s joke or by Chris Rock’s joke, you don’t act out in violence. That is not a show of love, that’s a show of violence.”

When it came time for Whoopi Goldberg to comment on Will Smith, she explained that she felt it was the culmination of a few years worth of jabs coming from Rock, starting with a joke he made at the 2016 Oscars where he said “Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. I wasn’t invited.”

Goldberg said of Smith’s behavior, “I think he overreacted… I think he had one of those moments where it was like, G-D it, just stop! Just stop!”

Though Goldberg didn’t condone Smith’s behavior, she certainly didn’t feel as strongly about it as Sunny, saying, “Not everybody acts the way we would like them to under pressure, some people just snap. He snapped.”

Whoopi then praised Rock for not taking “to the other place it could have gone,” and keeping his cool in response to the slap.

Twitter was divided over Sunny’s strong reaction to Smith, with some applauding her for speaking up about Smith’s violent outburst, and other people calling her out for what they considered a conservative, Meghan McCain-like take on things.

Who knows where things will go with this conversation later this week when Judd Apatow joins the panel on Thursday. Apatow’s hot takes about Will Smith certainly haven’t gone over well either.

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