Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Is Will Smith going to be at the 2023 Oscars?

It’s been a year, and people are still talking about the 2022 Oscars. While not a lot of people watched last’s year’s ceremony, everyone knows what happened: Ariana DeBose “did the thing” and won Best Supporting Actress for playing Anita in Steven Spielberg’s exhilarating remake of West Side Story. Okay, while that did happen, the far more noteworthy event that occurred was Will Smith, everyone’s favorite Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, slapped comedian Chris Rock onstage in front of millions of people.

Now commonly referred to as “The Slap,” the incident had immediate repercussions. Smith was banned from the Academy for 10 years and had some of his film projects either delayed or outright canceled. Rock laid low for a while and only in March commented directly about the incident in a popular Netflix comedy special, Selective Outrage. With the 2023 Oscars set to occur shortly, a lot of people are asking if the Suicide Squad actor is going to attend this year’s ceremony. After all, it’s a tradition for the Best Actor winner to return the following year to present the Best Actress award. So is Will Smith going to be at tonight’s 95th annual Academy Awards? And if he is, can you live stream the 2023 Oscars?

Recommended Videos

The answer is simple … and complicated

Will Smith slaps Chris Rock at the Oscars.
Robyn Beck / Getty

The short answer is no. The Academy has no plans to break its ban and let Smith return to attend the ceremony. That doesn’t mean that the 2023 Oscars won’t address what happened last year. In a press conference earlier this week, executive producer Molly McNearney announced, “We’re going to acknowledge it, and then we’re gonna move on.” She added, “We don’t want to make this year about last year. It’s certainly something we can and will address in a comedic fashion.”

At the very least, expect a few jokes here and there as comedians probably can’t resist poking fun at the incident. Who knows, maybe Chris Rock will make a surprise appearance and make some joke about it as a way for everyone to “move on.”

A distant but still possible scenario is Smith himself returning. After all, before “The Slap,” the Academy’s most embarrassing moment ever was when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announced the wrong Best Picture winner in 2017. That incident, known now as “Envelopegate,” involved Dunaway mistakenly reading Emma Stone’s Best Actress envelope for La La Land instead of the Best Picture envelope, which revealed the winner to be Moonlight. Yet only a year later, the Academy brought Dunaway and Beatty back to present the Best Picture Oscar to Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water.

If the Academy was willing to bring the perpetrators of one of its biggest public embarrassments back so soon, it’s not out of the realm of improbability that they could be planning to secretly bring Smith back to make amends. It could be the best way for everyone involved to forge ahead.

Topics
Jason Struss
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Jason Struss joined Digital Trends in 2022 and has never lived to regret it. He is the current Section Editor of the…
2024 Oscar predictions: Who will win Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, and more?
Two men talk in Oppenheimer.

The biggest pop culture event of the year is upon us. The 2024 Oscars ceremony is this weekend, and everyone is asking one question: Who is going to win? An endless parade of precursor awards like the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards, and the SAG Awards, have given some clues to potential victors, but no one really knows for sure who is going to win Best Picture, Best Actress, and the other 21 categories.

Will the two movies that made up last summer's Barbenheimer phenomenon, Oppenheimer and Barbie, emerge triumphant? Or will underdogs like The Holdovers or Poor Things impress enough voters to secure surprise wins? Digital Trends will look into a crystal ball and give our best guess as to who will win, who will go home empty-handed, and who might pull off an upset.

Read more
All the 2024 Best Actress Oscar nominees, ranked
A woman bows her head in court in Anatomy of a Fall.

The 2024 Oscars are here, and it's not too hard to predict who will emerge victorious next Sunday. Oppenheimer is poised to sweep the ceremony, with projected wins for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director. Barbie, meanwhile, will win Best Song, while Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will likely snag Best Animated Feature.

There's one category, however, that remains a bit of a toss-up. This year's Best Actress race has five intriguing nominees, and while I won't predict who will win, I will list who deserves to win, from least to most, and explain why their performances either failed to move me or still keep me thinking about them months after I've watched them.

Read more
5 great Hulu movies you need to watch instead of the 2024 Oscars
A man sticks a plunger into a costume character's face in Willy's Wonderland.

Let's face it: the Oscars aren't for everyone. Even some movie fans can't stand all the superficial pageantry, the endless thanking of people you haven't heard of, and the inane interviews that occur on a red carpet that's probably more expensive than your house.

Want some alternatives? You can do worse than watch some movies on Hulu. In fact, you should watch the five movies on the list below. Some are past Oscar nominees, some were box office hits, and all of them are a guaranteed fun time.

Read more