Judi Dench is sharing her vantage point from the Oscars audience during the moment Will Smith struck Chris Rock onstage.
In an interview with the U.K.'s The Sunday Times, Dench, 87, recalled attending the Academy Awards on March 27, where she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Belfast.
At one point in the ceremony, 53-year-old Will walked onstage and struck comedian Rock, 57, for making a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith's shaved head. Jada lives with alopecia, and Will — who won Best Actor later that night — said in a statement days later that the punchline was "too much for me to bear" and he "reacted emotionally."
"I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris. I was out of line and I was wrong. I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be. There is no place for violence in a world of love and kindness," Will added, later resigning from the Academy, which then banned him from attending their ceremonies for the next 10 years.
Dench said that the shocking moment felt like a skit at first. "We thought that it was a joke. Everybody did. [Then,] 'Oh, it's not a joke," she told the Times. "It was just endless this year — that was the good bit actually."
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The actress said highlights from the 2022 Oscars included catching up with Anthony Hopkins, who was a presenter that night, and her plus-one, grandson Sam, 25, meeting nominee Andrew Garfield. "He loved that," said Dench.
Elsewhere in the interview, Dench recalled a time prior to her movie career when, after an audition in the '60s, a director told her she didn't have the face for the big screen. "He was perfectly nice. But at the end he said, 'You'll never make a film. You have the wrong face,' " recalled Dench. "And I said that is fine, I don't like film anyway. I want to go back to the theatre."
In the months since the Oscars incident, Rock has made brief jokes at standup performances referencing the moment, but he hasn't yet spoken about it in length. He has said he'll "talk about it at some point" eventually.
Jada, 50, addressed the incident on a recent episode of her Red Table Talk show, saying, "About Oscar night: My deepest hope is that these two intelligent, capable men have an opportunity to heal, talk this out and reconcile. With the state of the world today, we need 'em both, and we all actually need one another more than ever. Until then, Will and I are continuing to do what we have done for the last 28 years — and that's [to] keep figuring out this thing called life together. Thank you for listening."