Will Smith made his comeback to the stage at the 2024 BET Awards on Sunday, June 30. The rapper-turned-actor performed his new song “You Can Make It,” marking his performance debut at the BET Awards.
It also marks the first time the Bad Boys star has appeared at an award show since the 2022 Academy Awards, where he received a 10-year ban after slapping Chris Rock. While there was fear that the actor would be canceled after the incident, the Hancock star slowly made his way back into the public’s good graces.
What happened at the Oscars?
During the 94th Academy Awards on March 27, 2022, Will Smith walked onstage and assaulted Chris Rock by slapping him across the face during the comedian’s presentation for Best Documentary Feature. The slap was in response to an unscripted GI Jane joke Chris made about Will’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head, which was a result of her being diagnosed with alopecia. The incident became known as “The Slap Heard Around the World” and “Slapgate,” dominating the social media conversation for weeks.
Some people, including celebrities, were appalled by Will’s behavior at the Oscars and he was punished with a ban from the prestigious Academy and any of its events for 10 years. Some of the projects that he had in the works were put on hold because of the now infamous Oscars slap. The Netflix film Fast and Loose and Sony’s highly-anticipated sequel Bad Boys 4 were both temporarily shelved.
Will slowly returned to the spotlight after the Oscars incident
Will disappeared from the spotlight, seemingly more preoccupied with inner healing than his career. The Hitch star took a break from the public and social media for about four months, traveling to Ecuador and other countries during that time. At the end of July 2022, he answered some prewritten questions addressing the night of the Oscars on Instagram.
“Over the last few months, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and personal work. You asked a lot of fair questions that I wanted to take some time to answer,” he said in the video, and added that his wife Jada Pinkett Smith had “nothing to do with it” even though the slap happened after the comedian made a joke at her expense.
Will returned to work to promote his film Emancipation
Since that video, the actor got back on the horse and has been fully back in the public eye, being active and regularly sharing videos on social media. His official career return was during the press tour for his Apple TV+ drama Emancipation, giving him a controlled space to answer questions about the incident and masterfully keeping the attention on the film, which hit theaters in December 2022. He received support from other Black entertainers for the release of that film.