The 2022 Oscars have been at the core of the cultural conversation for weeks after they aired, mostly due to the Will Smith/Chris Rock slap incident. For anyone who wasn't watching the broadcast and has somehoe missed every piece of news that has come out about it for the past week, Chris Rock was presenting one of the awards and made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith's wife, and compared her shaved head to that of G.I. Jane. Pinkett Smith has been very open about her struggle with alopecia, so the joke came off as in very bad taste, and Will Smith felt strongly enough about it that he walked up on stage, slapped Chris Rock, and then sat back down in his seat and yelled at him.
It was a jarring series of events and no one, not even most of the attendees, could tell whether the moment was scripted or not. Smith also of course went on to win the Best Actor category, further adding to the drama. In the wake of all of this, Smith resigned from the Academy and multiple movies that were set to star Will Smith have been put on hold. It seems like Hollywood is now trying to distance itself from Smith after this and studios and other actors may be reluctant to work with him in the future. Is this going to affect the rest of his career?
It's hard to say, of course, since the news cycle normally moves so rapidly that even the most pressing news becomes irrelevant after a week. It's possible that the culture might slowly forget about the Will Smith Oscars incident and he'll be able to move on with his career like normal after this awkward period. In fairness, Hollywood figures have done much worse things and gotten away with it for much longer (people like Roman Polansky, Harvey Weinstein, and Kevin Spacey all come to mind), so it would be incredibly hypocritical for all of Hollywood to blacklist Will Smith for this while they still allow alleged or even proven sexual offenders to have thriving careers.
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On the other hand, this incident might make Smith seem volatile and difficult to work with, if one comment could set him off that much (though it should be noted that Chris Rock has made fun of Jada Pinkett Smith multiple times in the past, and this was likely the final straw for Will Smith). A lot of producers and other people involved with making movies and TV shows might not want to work with someone who could become a problem on set if he's upset, and many might take this one moment as an opportunity to condemn his whole character.
It's also possible that these projects didn't want the negative press that would inevitably come from being involved with Smith at this current moment. The internet and society as a whole likes to be divided right now, and so these studios would likely receive a lot of pushback from certain people if they continued to give Will Smith opportunities after what he did. However, on that same note, those studios are already getting pushback because there are plenty of people out there on the internet who don't think that Will Smith should be canceled over this incident and think that Hollywood as a whole is overreacting.
There is obviously a certain level of racism at play here, as plenty of white celebrities do or say terrible things and still get to be in plenty of projects. It's actually surprising how quickly everyone turned on Will Smith, who was one of the more beloved Hollywood celebrities. There are so many stars coming out and talking about how deeply disturbed they were by the slapping incident (which seems like a bit of overreaction when there are real problems like wars going on), and it just seems like everyone in the entertainment industry decided to band together against Smith, save for the few blessed celebrities who outright said that they didn't want to have an opinion on it because it was already being talked about enough.
It will be interesting to see how this whole situation pans out in the future. Despite the fact that the slap was arguably the most interesting thing that happened at the Oscars and is the main reason anyone is still talking about the ceremony, no one wants to be accused of condoning violent actions by continuing to work with Will Smith. It seems that for the moment, he might have to take a step back from the spotlight to see if this blows over (and perhaps for the mental well-being of him and his family as well), and perhaps a little farther down the road he'll be able to be in projects again without it being an issue. If Hollywood wants to start punishing people for doing bad things, they can't just stop with this one Will Smith incident; they need to commit and start condemning everyone else who has done things that are arguably far worse.