Jimmy Kimmel certainly did not spare Will Smith during the Oscar ceremony. Both Chris Rock and the Academy Award winner were absent from this year’s event, but they were in every single person’s mind, waiting to be mentioned. Starting off right with the meaty stuff, Kimmel mentioned the slap gate incident in his initial monologue.

With so much content brewing up for a year, they had a special task to get rid of some of the harder jokes. While Kimmel’s tease at Smith may have seemed brave, it was only a milder peak of the iceberg below the surface and there were reasons for doing so.

Jimmy Kimmel held back on a lot of Will Smith content for the 2023 Oscars

The Oscar night this year was different from most. For one, they were more prepared for any mishaps or violence by setting up a crisis team. Kimmel, on the other hand, was prepared with a long barrage of sharp jokes about the controversy. Molly McNearney, who was an executive producer for the event, revealed to Variety how they had to cut out a lot of content. “There were certainly some that went harder, “ she said, referring to the jokes. They only chose to present the appropriate ones, leaving Chris Rock to deal with other kinds of content.

Confident in the system, Jimmy Kimmel took a jibe at Smith and joked about how anyone attempting an attack would get the Best Actor award. Also, sarcastically asked the audience to not do anything other than maybe giving the assailant a hug. While the slap gate incident between Will Smith and Chris Rock is no funny incident, it has not stopped people from making meme content out of it.

While being choosey about the jokes was necessary, they also had a task to make this event a success

How the team moved on from the slap gate incident with a positive evening

The executive producer said they wanted to take a light jab at the audience as well. Especially for sitting silently through the incident and then hearing Smith’s Oscar speech in 2022.

Then again, they needed to focus on making the 2023 Oscars amazing instead of this year being all about last year. In the end, it all worked well since there was no drama and Kimmel received praise for the hosting.

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