You have to drive a production truck all the way to their compound in Calabasas and spend a bunch of time laying down protective plastic for the crew just so Will can apologize.
My favorite part of this "apology" video isn't the over-production, the manipulative wording, or the lack of a proper apology. It's the clear and perfect placement of a single bottle of Jaden Smith's "Just Water" sitting on the table. Like the label is perfectly facing the long shot camera...
@@Indigo_1001 Yeah, right. In the vein of "I hate disappointing people, so I'm very sorry I disappointed people". It isn't an apology, it's him regretting the whole thing not going his way. And this is genuine regret, no doubt about it. But it's also narcissistic as fuck. I think I saw elements of this in almost every psychopathic apology video on youtube. "I'm sorry I got caught", "I'm sorry you got so upset about me doing nothing wrong" & "I'm sorry I got called out" deals are common.
For real. Honestly, this bullshit generic RU-vidr apology pisses me off soooo much more than the slap. The slap was at least funny and meme-able. This is just insufferable, and reminds me that Will is no longer the cool, funny dude I grew up watching. Fuck him. I hope his career disappears.
@@Darkko88 Yeah. I don't belive Zucc or Musk have ever been people. Smith is lacking in empathy because celebrity life has drained him of any human reflexes.
If I was Will Smith I'd say something like "I'm sorry I overreacted. I felt the need to defend my wife after that joke, but I realize now that assault was definitely not the correct action. A sudden anger came over me and I couldn't seem to stop myself, and afterwards I still felt extremely emotional and felt defensive on both my behalf and my wife's. But slapping someone isn't right, and I apologize to Chris Rock that I physically assaulted him. I should've talked to him in person instead, or preferably let my wife to speak for herself. I'm embarrassed, and will definitely work on myself and my emotional issues in the future. This isn't who I want to be or be known as." That feels more genuine and productive to me
Can I hire you to write future apologies for me, should the need ever arise? This was the most well-spoken apology I've ever read and it's just a hypothetical thought experiment.
If Will Smith made an apology video two or three days after slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars, it might have seemed genuine. Still, the fact that he waited like four months after the fact really showcases how his so-called "apology" was not really aimed toward Chris Rock himself but rather at the movie industry as a whole to get back to getting major roles that pay the big bucks. It's actually amazing how Will can even walk with how badly he shot himself in the foot here.
@@neidhardt8093 Did he though, or did he just explain why he did what he did and try to frame it as some sort of fatherly positive quality like the character he was getting the award playing would do? Because it might seem like an apology until you really think about it.
And him like grinding his molars and being not really sincere sounding sell’s that. Like when the bully’s apologizing, but he’s looking at you like he’s gonna get you next time for getting him caught in this.
Imagine a world where actors ply their craft and get paid well but are treated like regular people. Because they are, in fact, just people. We're the idiots who worship them like gods.
Yeah, as a regular person I remember fucking up pretty bad and then posting a multi angle, high production value apology video to the public media sphere. Because "regular people" wouldn't just, u know, call and apologize.
Yeah, except money runs the US justice system, and a 'regular' person would be immediately arrested for committing assault, regardless of it being broadcast live or not. Yeah, it's society's fault. But guess what? The Rubicon is crossed. These aren't regular people. They're demi-gods.
I'm sure Will Smith was waiting for an apology from Chris Rock, and had to have it explained to him several times that he needed to be the one who apologized
Imagine being an actor in Hollywood and you can't even pretend to be honestly sorry. His eyes are lifeless the whole time. The set doesn't make it feel anymore genuine either. Who wants to bet if this is just a PR stunt that someone else came up with?
I think the whole production of this "apology" is still a sign he can't keep his goddamn ego at the door. He needs to make a big show of saying sorry because he thinks he's that important. And I do say he's to blame. I find it a little creepy how much people act like Jada is some massive manipulator, she's certainly no saint, but Will Smith has always been insecure. He boycotted the Oscars when Concussion wasn't given a best actor nom, and even we'll before that his last attempt at a rap career album was full of petulant whining that he wasn't as popular as other rappers. He's always been this way.
I hate how people say that if the slap didn’t happen, Will Smith’s Oscar would’ve been well-deserved, thinking that he has always been a classy actor. I don’t think they understand how unhinged Will could be. I think I’ve heard in a podcast about how he wanted to kill his own father, which is just not a healthy thought to hold for so long.
@@mackielunkey2205 The "Killing his father" is extremely taken out of context. He was talking about how his father would abuse his mom when he was a kid and how he wished he was able to do something about it.
It's funny, I hadn't thought about the slap since the week it happened, but my initial impression was that he felt completely justified and righteous. If I had found out a month from thenthat he had reached out to Chris Rock, offered a sincere apology, and Chris wasn't ready to talk, I would have though "Oh, good for everyone. It's an awkward situation." But this video just confirms everything I initially thought. He's only mad that it might hurt his image.
@@neidhardt8093 I looked it up, and while it's pretty sobering to hear the full story, it's kind of sad to see Will have this need to overcompensate when white knighting people because of this traumatic event.
Yeah, I find that so bizarre that people framed this whole situation against Jada? And painting Will as the victim of “domestic abuse”, hence explaining his action on the Oscar’s. Like my god, the amount of people that ACTUALLY believes that Jada told him to go up the stage and assault Rock is insane.
I'm just so done with celebrity culture now. Corona really highlighted it to me how vapid and meaningless this all is, why am I supposed to forgive Will Smith for anything, do these narcissists really think I'm waiting on the edge of my seat for their apology after some shitty publicity stunt. Do they think I can't tell how obviously contrived and synthetic and predetermined this is, how much of a good PR team Will has. They think I'm worth nothing while they get to party everyday as the world collapses around them. I hate everything this video represents.
I wish more people thought like you. I can never understand how some folks can be so interested in the lives of people they don’t even know. It’s ridiculous.
I've noticed it in multiple fandoms now, being a fan isn't about just enjoying the content/art anymore, it's about this competition of whose "fav" is less "problematic", people don't discuss discographies or filmographies, they discuss the last "problematic" thing a celebrity did, and whether or not they accept their apology, and it becomes headache-inducing when a celebrity could breathe and someone will be offended (I think Will was definitely in the wrong here, though). Point is, I just don't care. If I like the music or the movie or whatever, I like it, simple - like, if my friend pisses me off, I wouldn't call them "problematic", I'd just be like, "they did a thing and I didn't like it, oh no". It's funny how people so easily attach themselves to celebrities and form parasocial relationships, just to immediately throw them away when a celebrity makes a human mistake. And I can't help thinking this is all a cycle, the thing happens, the fans talk about it, the celebrities/team realise they can use it for attention, they bring it up again, people talk about it, etc. I wish Hollywood was just about movies, maybe then they could actually write some good ones.
Spoken like a true narcissist. The fact that it took you this long to be “done” with celebrity culture shows how vapid you are. You’re only saying all this cause it’s popular. Stfu with your self righteous drivable.
He's leaving out the best detail in his breakdown of how long he had to think about it hahaha That new Yorker article talks about the after-party when everyone was so confused and freaked out, Will was dancing with everyone all happy, and the DJ played the fresh prince theme hahaha and he jammed out Like 100% not upset, regretful or anything
That’s cause he isn’t upset about the fact that it happened; he’s upset about the fact that it became the news and completely overshadows anything else about him to people.
I love that, right after Will says "I want to apologize to Chris' mother", I immediately said out loud to myself, "And then he stands up and says '...for having to give birth to Chris. BOOM.'." Then, right as I finished saying it, Adam had the same basic idea.
A lot of these RU-vidr apologies should just be a 30 second video of them going “I’m sorry, I fucked up, I’m well aware that I fucked up, and I plan to correct my mistakes. Thank you.” Instead of these long ass confessions where they’re clearly putting on a performance for the camera.
"I pride myself and think of myself as a man of faith, as there's a drive into deep left field by Castellanos and that'll be a home run. And so that'll make it a 4-0 ballgame. "
A quote that comes to mind while watching this flaccid attempt at an apology (and a plethora of other celebrity apology videos) is from George Orwell: "The great enemy to clear language is insincerity." The excessive production value and circuitous way we weaves around actually saying the words "I'm sorry, and I feel ashamed for my behavior" or "tell me what you'd have me do to make amends" shows his lack of guilt in crystal clarity. It's also extremely entertaining to watch his struggle to read his scripted lines as though he's improvising them.
What's ironic is that Will slapping Chris brought a lot more attention to that joke. If he had just let it pass and said something to Chris in private, everyone would have moved on, and most people would not have even heard the joke. But instead, millions of Americans heard the joke and Jada's going to have to deal with it for a while.
He had no reason to apologize to Jada. She has gone above and beyond to be shitty to him, which makes him slapping Chris over her even worse and undeserved on Chris’s end.
It’s frankly insane that Will Smith was about to become THE biggest star in Hollywood and instead he’s systematically destroying every shred of his reputation. He’s never going to outlive this.
It took this long for him to apologize because it took this long for the repercussions to kick in. Basically he's not apologizing because he means it, but because he got in trouble and realized he can't get away with it.
He'll get work just fine and will never see the concept of living hand to mouth. He's apologizing because market data has informed his PR team that his whole "thing" is being a nice guy. And not just a nice guy, but Big Willy himself. Also, this wasn't any sort of valid apology.
I'm curious who on the production team, which likely cost ten thousand dollars or more, decided to give Will Smith a white hat and then put a white globe light directly behind his head.
Lol I think he meant his mental health is declining and he’s out of it because he’s fucking crazy or just cause he’s d e e p l y r e m o r s e f u l or some shit
10:38 That is soooo telling of how he views this. "I apologize to my kids for all the HEAT I brought on us" He apologized for the bad publicity, and in no way mentioned anything that would sound genuine like "I apologize for failing my duties as a Father to teach my kids how to respect other people, or handle difficult situations. I failed at being the role model they deserved" Nope...Just whoops! That made us look silly for a minute huh?
The worst thing about the apology is that it makes the situation look more complex or important than it really was. Like.. he hit a dude in the face unprovoked. It’s a very simple situation of him being obviously in the wrong and doesn’t warrant all of this philosophical reflection he’s trying to do. He just looks like he’s trying to use this as an opportunity to appear insightful. The apology is motivated by the same desire as what motivated the assault: he wants attention and thinks too highly of himself.
I swear so many actors have completely forgotten how to just be people. Like imagine one of your friends, walking up in front of a huge crowd of people, slapping the shit out of you, unprompted for a joke maybe 10 people in attendance even understood, going on 2 psychotic rants immediately after, and then NOTHING for 4 months. Then suddenly, 4 months later that person, instead of understanding how much of an asshole they were, or even sending you a PRIVATE apology, they start a group chat with every mutual person, and post an edited video of themselves being like “Ohhh I’m sowwy I swapped the shit out of you oooo and made big rant,” and somehow find a way to still justify it to themselves. Tl;dr, if a friend did this to you, you’d think they were psychotic and not associate with them anymore.
He sounds angry the whole time, like the whole "apology" is said through gritted teeth. He obviously doesn't give a shit and was pestered to do this by PR people or something despite his objections, which is probably why it took three months to finally happen. You can still hear him skirting around fully admitting it was completely bizarre and unjustified, like he still internally believes it was right for him to do it. He seems very unhinged as well, dude's got some screws loose or something. Fucking rich people man. I do have to hand it to him though, it was fucking hilarious and was the only reason I would ever pay attention to the Oscars. I genuinely hope he slaps someone again honestly.
Holy shit, I just caught this part: "I made my own choice based on my own experiences with Chris..." That sounds an awful lot like victim blaming to me. Essentially, it's chris' fault that will slapped him. I know that in theor family, they have a tendency to waffle on and speak word salad, but sometimes you're allowed to think just a little bit before opening your mouth.
Him blatantly lying on the question about Jada's eye roll just makes his general apology to Chris and everyone seem even less genuine. Like Adam said, he had so much time to stop himself from assaulting Chris and to apologize afterwards. He didn't think he was in the wrong. Wouldn't surprise me if he's doing this because he lost some acting roles (from what I had read).
Is the cinematographer for this apology video not aware that cutting to a different angle while the subject is apologizing directly to the camera makes the whole thing feel *really* impersonal? Yet another reason why overproducing this video was a super stupid idea
The only way this could have been more sincere and genuine is if half way through a sentence he broke off into "...this apology video is brought to you by Raid: Shadow Legends!"
the worst thing about this "apology", is that he says "it's all so complex to unpack" which implies he understood nothing about what he did. there's nothing complex about what he did: he was a selfish prick.
Maybe, but human emotions are complex when you feel them. Describing him as a selfish prick is using the wrong words. Don’t think he was selfish, just irrationally angry which he dealt with entirely wrong. And he does (atleast pretend to) understand that, he says so at 8:14.
Okay, before we begin, are we having our apology video bingo cards ready? Is he gonna open with a deep sigh? Will he shed a few tears while talking about how hard life is for him? Is the video going to devolve into him making a bunch of excuses for himself? Will he, at any point, address the actual person he's supposed to apologize to or is this all for his fans and himself? First to get a bingo will recieve a high-five from cool cat.
When Will says that he spent the last 3 months replaying the moment and studying the nuances, it's code for he's been studying the film for the re-match.
12:50 right away you can instantly tell he's lying. if that's your *trauma*, that's going to be something you think about and obsess over at every turn and at every decision. with how he was sitting down and actively chose to get up and commit to something like that? like, it didn't cross your mind? what? i don't have any opinion on the slap itself i just thought it was funny but can we not make light of trauma please? thanks will
I had no respect since I learned of his involvement with the Cult of Scientology. I've since read that Jada was the one really pushing that, but that's probably mostly more "woman bad" deflecting. He still gave them his money and his decency, regardless of her involvement.
Quite honestly, I’m just over this whole thing. I don’t side with Will or Chris (though I think it was mostly Will’s fault). I just want Will to go to therapy, possibly divorce Jada as she’s kinda toxic, Chris to address the thing and maybe make a response, and we all live happily ever after and never have to talk about the slap again.
NO!!! WE HAVE TO KEEP TALKING ABOUT IT AS IF ITS A MAJOR POLITICAL/ECONOMIC ISSUE!!! ITS THE MOST TRAUMATIZING AND PTSD INDUCING EVENT TO HAPPEN ON TELEVISION SINCE 9/11!!!!
I love the fact that security asked him if he wanted to leave. Not "you have to leave" just "do you want to leave?". the capital building security ain't sh*t compared to the Oscars security. Lol.
Something that you recognized and pointed out in the Oscar video was that Will Smith's original reaction to the joke was laughter. He didn't get "angry" until he clocked Jada's disapproval. Oops, it was covered after this comment. 😬
Kind of wild how people are putting the blame on Jada when all she did was look annoyed at a joke about her. Not gonna defend her super hard but Will is a full adult man with agency so I don't know how much of his behaviour you can blame on his wife.
Yeah, I think most people blame Will but anyone acting like Jada "made" him do it is lowkey being sexist. It's not a wife's job to keep her husband in line. And even if she did ask him to go "defend her honor", Will's an adult who can say No. At the end of the day, she's not the one who slapped anyone, and honestly she probably would have been happier if he didn't. Now everyone knows about the embarrasing joke, and she probably still gets interview questions about the slap to this day.
from what I've seen people aren't "blaming" her so much as they are attributing her cucking and emasculating him for years to his outburst as him trying to gain some respect from her.
Even after a year, I never saw his apology video. I heard about it but was like "Wtf, so late" and didn't bother cause MONTHS later but the fact that he didn't apologize at the awards made me lose EVEN MORE respect for him. As of Oct. 2023, I would like to know, if Adum cares anymore at this point, what his thought process would be after learning from Jada's recent interview and memoir book, that they were seperated for a few years already. So, I can't help but think Will did the slap out of trying to gain respect and get back in with Jada like a "Look what I did for you!" thing, rather than being genuine respect of your spouse, even though the slap was 100% uncalled for and all the bullshit she's put him through previously before the slap. At this point, I'm confused since she dropped that shit.
I don't think it was out of respect but more of a "Look look I slapped the bad man that made fun of you, did I did good massa?" cause at this point Will is just a slave to that bold Hag
@@revocable1687 That's what I'm saying. Her revealing the fact they haven't been together made me think "Will slapped him trying to impress her.". I've been saying he's needed to leave when she started airing shit out on her Red Table Talk podcast/show/whatever it is. I can understand from an outside POV (But a VERY SMALL degree and no previous context) that he would slap him for disrespecting his wife (Even though it's completely uncalled for) BUT learning shit from her now about their relationship? Oh yeah, he tried to slide back into her good graces.
@@neidhardt8093 I just think that Will should have been arrested like any normie would have been. Rock not pressing charges doesn't stop the state from doing it, but the rich get a different set of rules.
Honestly, if he did that joke of "I want to apologize to the mother of Chris, for blowing out her back last night" And just cutting to credits, I genuinely would like that so much more than this video. I wouldn't like it just because it would be absolutely hilarious, but just as 2 comedians roasting each other in a very cheesy, not actually hurtful insults, would be a great note to end this on. Like yeah, obviously apologize, but do it in person like a normal human, then have that video come out where he makes that joke, then have Chris Rock come into frame and make some good come back and they hug it out and everything is cool, because it's comedy, and comedy usually ends up with someone being the butt end of the joke and if you can't take that then you're in the wrong business. So if that were to have happened instead, I would respect him so much more than this garbage "Apology"
If he really felt sorry, he wouldn’t have made this video public and apologized to Chris in private. All of this is just to protect his image and gain everyone’s sympathy.
What Will Smith is experiencing is the “Tom Cruise jumping the couch” moment. The moment we learned the true Tom cruise/will smith. The funny thing is that Tom Cruise’s apology sounded more sincere than Will and it really wasn’t. He was smart enough not too wait this long for his Brooke Shields apology.
I think Tom is delusional megalomaniac with good intentions, whereas Will Smith is just a coward with delusions whose pride was hurt and he went violent. Tom hadn't hit anyone or cursed from the seat, he is not a coward, he is disciplined to hold himself together.
I swear to god, every single RU-vid Apology video is just written by an AI algorithm. They are all exactly the same. Person sighs and sits downs, then deflects on their actions.
i think its problematic to act as though he somehow holds less responsibility for what happened than Jada. Its a distraction. Will has been a very fragile person for a very long time.