Will Smith seeks universal forgiveness after Oscars slap with a new installment of ‘Bad Boys’

In reality, the slap was inaudible, but its shockwave reverberated around the world. From the epicenter of the Kodak Theater stage on March 27, 2022, that ripple has continued to vibrate, overshadowing the career of Will Smith, once Hollywood’s Mr. Nice and beloved by the public, who in 30 seconds destroyed his artistic future by getting up from his seat at the Oscar ceremony and slapping the comedian Chris Rock, who had just made a joke about the alopecia suffered by his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Neither the statuette he won minutes later, for King Richard, nor the messages of repentance he issued later, have served to make the cinemagoing audience forget. On June 7, Smith’s first big release after the incident will be in theaters, and the actor has chosen to play it safe by enlisting his friend Martin Lawrence and returning to his most popular franchise, Bad Boys, with a fourth installment, Bad Boys: Ride or Die. Now the question is; is the world ready to forgive the Fresh Prince?

Between irony and acknowledgement of error, Bad Boys: Ride or Die places its protagonists in the same predicament its star is currently navigating: clearing their names after their captain, who died in the previous installment, was accused of being a corrupt cop in the pay of drug cartels and, therefore, they have become suspects themselves. There are a couple of jokes about the age of Mike Lowrey (Smith’s character), who finally settles down when he marries past 50, and a sequence involving the star getting repeatedly slapped that doesn’t seem like a banal gag. And yes, cameos from several of Smith’s friends, including director Michael Bay, the filmmaker who started the franchise. And of course there are all kinds of explosions and violence, and many pleas for forgiveness for the use of weapons.

After the actual violence, Smith took a long time to react and repent. In the madness that ensued at the gala, after he slapped Rock, the actor returned to his seat next to his wife. After he was announced as the winner of the Best Actor Oscar, he delivered a speech in which he said: “Love pushes you to do crazy things.” Hours later, a video went viral in which Smith appeared dancing at the Vanity Fair party to one of his biggest hits, Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It. Just when the dramatic actor had left behind the long shadow of the rapper and comedian, who gained immense popularity thanks to the television series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Smith had self-sabotaged.

An apology was still several months away, and he provided it in a six-minute video posted on his YouTube channel and Instagram account, and only after Rock had declared he wasn’t “ready to talk.” On camera, Smith said, “I spent the last three months replaying and understanding the nuance and complexity of what happened in that moment [...] There is no part of me that thinks that was the right way to behave in that moment. No part of me that thinks that is the optimal way to handle a feeling of disrespect or insult.” In April, he had been banned for a decade from any Hollywood Film Academy event.

The Smith family’s charity went under. Netflix decided to halt production on Fast and Loose, a thriller starring Smith, and has only picked it up again after Sony wrapped Bad Boys: Ride or Die. “Everyone was waiting to see who would blink first,” a studio executive told Variety. “Netflix definitely wasn’t willing to be the first studio to get back into business with Will.” Apple TV released Emancipation in December 2022, another movie primed for Smith to cement his status as a dramatic actor. It told the true story of a slave who ran away from a plantation in 19th-century Louisiana, but it went down the platform’s drain. Jada Pinkett Smith, who tried to get her husband and Rock to reconcile, published her memoirs in which she explained that they had been separated for seven years; even so, she supports him and accompanied him in Los Angeles at the premiere of the fourth installment of Bad Boys, together with her children and her mother.

This promotional tour — after a surprise appearance at the Coachella festival, where he performed Men in Black during J Balvin’s concert — is the actor’s official return to public life, taking in eight countries in 14 days. But the question remains: will the public forget the slap?

For Antonio Rubial, head of Spanish talent agency A6 Cinema, there is only one way for someone in a situation like Smith’s to turn the page: “By being humble. And asking for real forgiveness. He has to be aware that he screwed up, because there are people who don’t admit their mistakes and that’s why anything they say is not credible. The public isn’t stupid, and if they feel it comes from the heart, they forgive.” Rubial would also advise someone in a similar situation to do interviews with unfriendly media: “There is press and there is press. It was a mistake: part of the process is to be questioned by journalists who make you uncomfortable, because you can get your message across and the public will assume that you are serious.”

Antonio Martín Guirado, a member of By & For, the agency that represents athletes, including Atlético de Madrid star Antoine Griezmann, thinks similarly: “Without knowing exactly the path Smith has taken, I would advise him to apologize, apologize, apologize, pure and simple repentance. Let there be no doubt about that repentance, and let him stand in front of a top journalist to tell his feelings”. Antonio Martín Guirado of the By & For agency, suggests another prior commitment: “He must first sit down and ask for forgiveness from the victim. Finally, he will have to look very carefully at the quality of the projects he takes on, because the other key that helps people to get out of these situations — charisma — Smith has in abundance.”

The release of Bad Boys: Ride or Die will be followed by Fast and Loose and Sugar Bandits, in which Smith will play an Iraq veteran who joins forces with ex-comrades to take down drug traffickers in Boston. He is also filming the series Pole to Pole, for National Geographic, in which a crew has filmed him hiking from the South Pole to the North Pole.

In the United States, experts believe that in its first weekend, Bad Boys: Ride or Die will gross between $30 and $50 million in 3,850 theaters. Sony puts the minimum at $30 million; other analysts say $45 million is more likely. Any box office close to that amount will confirm that Smith has pulled off Hollywood’s umpteenth clean slate.

During an appearance on Spanish television show El hormiguero, which aired taped on May 29, the closest Smith came to referring to the slap was when he was asked him for some advice for the tough times. “The most important thing is to accept the fact that I am a human being and I am not perfect; in that search for perfection is when you lose self-esteem. In recent years I have been forced to accept my flaws, and to learn to love myself a little more as an imperfect person,” he replied.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition