Jean-Claude Van Damme's staged red carpet slap resurfaces after Will Smith incident

On Sunday, the internet and celebrity audience members at the Oscars looked on in shock as Will Smith slapped Chris Rock across the face for making a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

At first, it wasn't entirely clear if it was a planned comedic moment for the show, but it turned out to be real.

As a result of the heated exchange, it reminded people of another moment at a film festival where two A-list actors almost got into a full-on brawl, which turned out to be fake.

Nick de Semylyn, an editor for Empire Magazine, took to Twitter to share a clip of actors Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren having a pushing match at the 1992 Cannes Film festival to promote their sci-fi action film Universal Soldier.

The film is about two rival soldiers who were killed in Vietnam and were then resurrected from the dead via a secret military experiment that creates superhuman warriors.

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Van Damme portrayed the hero, and Lundgren portrayed the villain.

In the video, the two action heroes can be seen outside the festival hall, arguing. Then, they began to push and threaten each other before the guards intervened.

In a report from Screenrant, the faux altercation was orchestrated by Van Damme.

The outlet said that the Belgian actor thought of the idea in response to Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger dancing the waltz at the 1991 festival and the media attention it received.

Van Damme then made the decision to do his own publicity stunt with Lundgren.

Phoning his Universal Soldier co-star from his hotel in Cannes, Van Damme proposed that they showcase some “friction” on the red carpet, under the belief that it would draw more attention to their movie, which was already filmed but still a couple of months away from its theatrical release.

And it worked.

The fight immediately took over the headlines and brought attention to Universal Solider.

There were also some fake rumours of a bitter rivalry between the two actors that raised numerous questions from television personalities and reporters about what caused their conflict at the festival. For Van Damme and Lundgren, it’s become a joking matter as they recounted their story interviews for the film.

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