Will Smith’s on stage smackdown of Chris Rock at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony was only made even more dramatic by the actor’s Oscar win that took place just moments after.

Shortly before Smith won the gong, he stormed onto the stage and slapped Rock in the face for a disrespectful comment the presenter made about his wife’s medical condition.

Before the audience had time to recover from the dramatic moment, it was announced that Smith had won best actor for his role as ‘Richard’ in the tennis biopic King Richard.

Smith took to the stage to accept the award and tearfully sublty addressed his attack on Rock.

“Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family,” Smith said in his acceptance speech.

He added: “Denzel said to me a few minutes ago,” Smith added, crying. “He said, ‘At your highest moment, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you.’ I wanna be a vessel for love. I wanna say thank you to Venus and Serena and the entire Williams family for entrusting me with your story. That’s what I wanna do, I wanna be an ambassador of that kind of love and care and concern. I want to apologize to the Academy, I wanna apologize to all my fellow nominees. This is a beautiful moment.”

“Art imitates life. I look like the crazy father, just like they said, just like they said about Richard Williams. But love will make you do crazy things.”

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“Being able to love and care for my mother, my family, my wife — thank you for this honour. Thank you for this moment. And thank you on behalf of Richard and Oracene and the entire Williams family. Thank you. I hope the Academy invites me back.”

The shocking altercation between Smith and Rock took place after the latter made a joke about Jada Pinkett-Smith’s alopecia. During his spiel, Rock quipped that he loved Pinkett-Smith and “couldn’t wait” to see the sequel of G.I Jane, seemingly referencing her hair loss.

While the cameras showed Smith laughing about the joke, Pinkett Smith could be seen in the background rolling her eyes and looking unhappy.

The camera then panned back to Rock and he continued his monologue. Seconds later, Rock pauses to say, “Uh oh” and confused sounds can be heard coming from the crowd.

Smith then walked straight up to the host in the middle of the stage and hit him in the face. Rock was left almost speechless in surprise, and repeated the words “Wow”, as Smith headed back to his seat.

Once back seated, passionately yelled “get my wife’s name out of your mouth” a number of times to a very stunned crowd.

While some broadcasts managed to silence Smith’s outburst once he arrived back to his seat, multiple countries were still able to hear the entire incident.

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