Oscars producer Molly McNearney has revealed Sunday night’s ceremony was originally supposed to feature even more joke about the debacle at last year’s event.
However, Molly said these “harder” jokes about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock were ditched as the team “didn’t want to make this year all about last year”.
“I cannot tell you how many Will Smith jokes we had that then we got rid of,” Molly – who is married to Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel as well as producing his US talk show – told Variety. “We think that only the best for that room made it.
“There were certainly some that went harder, but we didn’t think that was our place to do that. That should be Chris Rock, not us.”
She added: “But we really liked the idea of making fun of the reaction to it last year. I think we’re all still in a bit of shock of how that went down and how after watching that violence everyone had to then sit through an acceptance speech.”
That’s not to say the night was completely without references to the incident.
During his opening monologue, Jimmy told the A-listers in attendance: “We want you to have fun, feel safe and, most importantly, we want me to feel safe. So, we have strict policies in place.”
“If anyone in this theatre commits an act of violence, at any point, you will be awarded the award for Best Actor, and permitted to give a 19-minute speech,” he added.
“If anything unpredictable or violent happens during the ceremony, just do what you did last year. Nothing. Maybe even give the assailant a hug.”
Elsewhere in her Variety interview, Molly said that one other joke that had to be pulled from the monologue involved Rihanna – not because of its content, but because the singer was late to her seat.
“We had two versions of the monologue,” Molly said. “One if Rihanna was in her seat, one if she was not in her seat.
“One if Rihanna had her baby on her lap, which she wanted to do. And one if her baby was not on her lap.
“A lot of our jokes were kind of at the mercy of people being in their seats. As they were pulling Jimmy up on that harness for the open, we’re shouting up to him, ‘Rihanna is not in her seat! We’re going to adjust the prompter!’.”