Film academy bans Will Smith from Oscars ceremony for 10 Years

The organization's board of governors met Friday to determine a response to the actor's conduct at the 94th Oscars when he slapped Chris Rock onstage.

Twelve days after Will Smith slapped and screamed profanities at Chris Rock during the 94th Academy Awards ceremony, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has ruled that Smith — who was presented with the best actor Oscar later that same evening — has been banned from returning to the Oscars or attending any other Academy events for the next 10 years.

Smith will retain the Oscar that he won and remains eligible for future Oscar nominations and wins.

The Academy’s 54-person board of governors held a special meeting on Friday to determine what action to take against Smith. Until one week ago, when Smith announced that he was resigning as a member of the organization, he was expected to face suspension or expulsion, having violated the standards of conduct that the Academy implemented following the #MeToo movement.

Many members of the industry have expressed outrage over Smith’s behaviour, which he himself called “shocking, painful and inexcusable.” Some even called for him to lose the Oscar statuette that he was awarded and/or his eligibility for future Oscars. But the Academy appears to have doubled down on its long-held position that there is a line between onscreen work and offscreen conduct. (Harvey Weinstein and Roman Polanski have been expelled from the organization, but each still has the Oscar statuette awarded to them prior to that.)

Smith, one of Hollywood’s most popular leading men for decades, exploded after Rock made a joke referencing the baldness of Smith’s wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, who has alopecia. (Rock reportedly went off-script and improvised the joke, not knowing of Pinkett Smith’s condition.) Pinkett Smith looked nonplussed, apparently prompting Smith, who initially laughed at the joke, to act, as attendees looked on in disbelief.

The Academy’s CEO Dawn Hudson and president David Rubin and Oscars ceremony producer Will Packer have since been under fire for failing to remove Smith from the Dolby Theatre. They have issued contradicting statements about whether the actor was asked to leave. Smith remained at the ceremony until it was over, then skipped the Academy’s Governor's Ball and made his way to the Vanity Fair Oscar party, where he danced to some of his own songs. He did not apologize to Rock until Monday.