We don’t really need to bring you up to speed, but we’re polite, so we’ll begin with of course you know all about how Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars on Sunday and then won Best Actor for his work in “King Richard.” When he won, he got a standing ovation, something plenty of people felt weird about since, you know, the thing we mentioned in the first sentence.
On Monday’s “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” things kicked off with a cold open joke that explained fairly definitively how Smith managed to pull that off. And if you looked at the featured image in this post, we bet you’ve already guessed the answer.
So, as always the “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” cold open started with a supercut of news summing up the situation, in this case, the fact that Smith got that standing O, despite how awk the whole situation was. And then came the gag.
I’ve Changed My Mind. I LOVE the Oscars!
So the joke uses edited footage of Smith’s actual Oscars speech to make it look like no one was clapping when Smith took the stage. After a couple of awkward seconds of hemming and hawing, Smith says “Ladies and gentlemen, if you will, look right here,” and then we see he’s holding up a Neuralyzer from “Men in Black” — you know, the thing the Men in Black use to make normals forget all about any alien weirdness they might have seen.
Smith flashes the bright light, and that’s when the applause starts. Which, yes, obvious joke but we laughed. Watch for yourself below:
And for those of you wondering, yes, Smith did actually apologize to Chris Rock. You can read about it here.