Liam O'Dell
Mar 28, 2022
IndependentTV
King Richard actor Will Smith is having a bumpy ride today after slapping comedian Chris Rock during Sunday’s Oscars ceremony – but so too is another Will Smith who happens to share the same generic name.
‘Will Smith’ continues to trend on Twitter this morning following the shocking incident, which saw the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star retaliate after Rock made a G.I. Joe joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, who has alopecia.
However, the verified @WillSmith Twitter account isn’t owned by that Will Smith, and so his mentions are absolutely fine right now, honestly.
Not really.
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“Whelp,” he simply tweeted, once news of the slap broke out.
This Will Smith is in fact a San Francisco podcast host who does comms for a games company, but that didn’t stop him from stirring the pot a little and using the privileges that come with being confused for another person.
I\u2019m sorry if you\u2019re offended.— Will Smith (@Will Smith) 1648435041
Writing that he was going to “keep tweeting through it”, Smith – though not that Smith – decided to use all the sudden attention to criticise the “inappropriately upbeat ‘In Memoriam’ segment”.
When one Twitter user joked Smith should apologise to Chris Rock – another individual sharing a generic name with the comedian – the broadcaster joked: “I will when he apologises to me personally.”
Smith’s thread did receive some mixed reactions, however, with some failing to spot that it wasn’t the Smith they had in mind:
the internets deductive skills are once again put on display herepic.twitter.com/uKQc0YB47O— wack \ud83e\udeb6 (@wack \ud83e\udeb6) 1648442066
Offended no....disappointed yes .. there's there's time and a place and this was NOT it— Cheryl Wiebe (@Cheryl Wiebe) 1648435770
Bruh control ur anger issues— Trinidad. (@Trinidad.) 1648435189
Each tweet in the thread has more than 1,000 retweets – the first of them standing at some 28,500 shares – which eventually lead podcaster Smith to clarify that he was not the actor who “got into one little fight”.
Real talk, I\u2019m not the person you\u2019re upset/happy with. I make podcasts and video games for a living. \n\nAt the risk of making people pissed off at me instead of that other guy, the world would be a better place if we stopped answering words with violence.— Will Smith (@Will Smith) 1648439301
He said: “Real talk, I’m not the person you’re upset/happy with. I make podcasts and video games for a living.
“At the risk of making people pissed off at me instead of that other guy, the world would be a better place if we stopped answering words with violence.”
Glad that’s settled, then. We couldn’t agree more.
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