Will Smith takes to TikTok to keep the Oscar Slap Saga going

polygon.com:

Nearly a year after the slap heard around the world, 2022 Best Actor Oscar winner Will Smith has taken to TikTok to get cheeky and move on.

In a duet video posted Tuesday, Smith reacts to TikToker Sam Rossi aka @missmoneyworking, who digs into “an absolutely unhinged exercise” that will “change your life.” Rossi suggests that anyone looking to get real with themselves pick up an inanimate object and ask it what it thinks of you. The idea: Your intuition will “speak” to you as the object, and reveal something you may not be comfortable enough to say as yourself. So, at the end of the video, Smith tries out the experiment… with his Oscar statue.

“This has got to be the hardest flex in 2023,” writes one commenter.

It’s a funny bit — and a blip on what feels like an unprecedented public rehabilitation journey with no true end.

#duet with @missmoneyworking

Last March, shortly before Smith picked up an Academy Award for his work in King Richard, ceremony host Chris Rock hurled an insult at Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, causing a blow up at the televised affair. “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!” Smith exclaimed from his seat before jumping up, taking to the stage, and smacking Rock in front of 16.6 million viewers. Smith immediately reacted to the altercation in his acceptance speech, then spent the subsequent months trying to repair the damage, a journey that ultimately led him to resign from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The AMPAS didn’t leave it at that: Noting that the 94th Oscars had been “overshadowed by the unacceptable and harmful behaviour we saw Mr Smith exhibit on stage,” the organization banned Smith from the Academy Awards for 10 years.

Smith, who prior to the slap and Oscar