Though Will Smith has issued an apology and announced his resignation from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences after infamously slapping Chris Rock during the 2022 Oscars, even a week later, the slap is still on everyone’s mind.
Everyone from Zoë Kravitz and Amy Schumer to Tiffany Haddish and Denzel Washington has expressed their opinion about the now historic Oscar moment, sharing sentiments in favor of either Rock or Smith. But at least one star who has longtime relationships with both is hoping for a positive cultural shift: Rosario Dawson.
Dawson was one of the many guests in attendance at Vanity Fair’s star-studded Oscar party, the first since 2020. And while the actor said it felt good to be in the room with her peers again, the circumstances were certainly a little stranger than normal.
“It was great to see everybody, but it was a very different vibe this year for sure, due to a lot of things,” Dawson told Vanity Fair at the Kate Spade fall 2022 collection presentation, referring to the Oscars incident that the star said, “we’re all still unpacking.”
“These are two people that I’ve known and loved for years, so it was really upsetting,” she said. Dawson starred in both Men in Black II and Seven Pounds with Smith, and also starred opposite Rock in Top Five. “I also think everyone is in this really kind of heavy place,” she continued, referring to the pandemic. “It’s been two years; it’s been a lot. You could feel an unsettled kind of feeling, I think, in the whole space.”
Though the slap overshadowed much of the ceremony, Dawson took it upon herself to carry out celebratory energy for winners like Questlove—whose directorial debut, Summer of Soul, took home the statuette for best documentary feature right after Smith struck Rock.
Dawson smiled at the memory. “Seeing Questlove…I got to give him his award at the Independent Spirit Awards, and it meant so much. And especially that story.”
Even with the looming drama of the slap, Dawson said, people still enjoyed themselves in the aftermath of the Oscars—acting as normal as they could while “stuffing their faces with In-N-Out.” But their mixed emotions were clearly prevalent.
“[The night] felt like the moment we’re still in. And I think that’s important because things are unsettling right now. We don’t have to disappear into fairyland and pretend everything is okay. It’s not,” the DMZ actor said. “There’s a reason why people have opinions on it because there is something there that we need to look at and unpack…and in a moment like a pandemic—it has shown how we can pivot,” Dawson explained.
“But I think that there is something that can be learned from all of this that I hope does shift some gears. I think people are reevaluating a lot of how we used to do things. This wasn’t normal; let’s not normalize any of this,” she added.
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