Academy Awards Producer: Standing Ovation for Will Smith Was Not Applauding the Slap But Support for a Friend

The producer for the Academy Awards told Good Morning America that, counter to public perception, the standing ovation actor Will Smith received after winning Best Actor was not an applause of Smith slapping comedian Chris Rock during Sunday’s Oscars.

Smith went onto the stage and slapped Rock after the latter made a joke about the former’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Later on, upon receiving the Oscar for Best Actor, Smith cried and apologized, though he did not mention Rock by name. However, Smith apologized to Rock in a statement on Monday.

Regarding the standing ovation Smith got, Oscars producer Will Packer said he has “a different perspective.”

He continued:

I was in the room and I know a lot of those people and so it wasn’t like this was somebody they didn’t know. it doesn’t make anything that he did right and doesn’t excuse that behavior at all but I think that the people in that room who stood up stood up for somebody who they knew, right, who was a peer, who was a friend, who was a brother, who has a three-decades-plus long career of being the opposite of what we saw in that moment. I think these people saw the person that they know and were hoping that somehow some way this was an aberration, he’s going to stand on stage and maybe Chris Rock comes from the back and says, we got you all, you know, I don’t think that these were people that were applauding anything at all about that moment and all these people saw their friend at his absolute worst moment and were hoping that they could encourage him and lift him up and that he would somehow try to make it better.

Watch above, via ABC.