Academy Creates a Crisis Team to Handle Celebrity Drama at Oscars After Will Smith Slap

Another reason celebrities are grown-ups is:

Time Magazine reports the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences asked them to be ready in case celebrities attacked one another again. Since Will Smith hit Chris Rock for mocking his wife Jada Pinkett Smith.

Time reported that Bill Kramer (the Academy’s CEO) has been assigned the task of bringing back the Academy’s dying viewers to the awards ceremony. This includes viewers under 40 years of age. It is difficult to do this in the age of YouTube and TikTok where younger viewers can watch highlights rather than sit down and watch an entire show.

Kramer was focused on the task at hand, but Smith’s slap caused a lot of distractions and headaches. Kramer created a “crisis team” to manage the fallout quickly and professionally. This was the first such group in Academy history.

Kramer stated, “We have a whole staff for crisis management, something we’ve never had before, and many plans in place for it.” “We have run many scenarios.” “We are prepared for anything that might happen, but we also plan for the worst, and hope for the best.”

Kramer admitted that he does not know what might happen at the Oscars. This is particularly true considering the controversy surrounding the Academy’s racism accusations.

Kramer may be right to establish a crisis team. However, it is disappointing that this has to be done. Celebrities have apparently become too volatile and emotional to handle things like adults. Everything from physical violence to accusations of bigotry and racism can appear out of nowhere and without warning. A simple joke can incite an over-the-top reaction, and nominating the wrong person can result in an entire Twitter campaign to discredit and detract.

That’s showbusiness, but while there’s no business like showbusiness, the people that work in it are too often not people who should be mirrored or believed. As has been pointed out by a few self-aware celebrities, many are ignorant and uneducated, living in bubbles of false realities.

When you get a lot of people like that in a room, anything can happen. More people paid attention to the Oscars in the year of the Smith slap, and attention-obsessed people will do anything to get what they want and others may take cues from that incident. While I doubt the Oscars will turn into the WWE, there’s no telling what kind of drama we might see.