Post-Will Smith Slap: Oscars Creates ‘Crisis Team’

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPA) has created a ‘crisis team’ for the 2023 Oscars scheduled to hold on March 12.

The role of the crisis team is to respond quickly to any potential real-time emergency. This comes after the 2022 Oscars scandalous event which saw actor, Will Smith slap comedian, Chris Rock, the presenter at the awards, after Rock made a GIJane joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett, who has alopecia.

“We have a whole crisis team, something we’ve never had before, and many plans in place. We’ve run many scenarios. So, it is our hope that we will be prepared for anything that we many not anticipate right now but that we are planning for just in case it does,” said AMPA CEO, Bill Kramer, in an interview with Time Magazine.

Kramer said there is a crisis and communication teams and structures in place, that can be regrouped quickly to respond to a potential unexpected event. “They allow us to say this is the group that we have to gather very quickly. This is how we all come together. This is the spokesperson. This will be the statement. And obviously, depending on the specifics of the crisis, let’s hope something doesn’t happen and we never have to use these; but we already have frameworks in place that we can modify.”