Rob Lowe says he was “the only person happy” when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars.
The actor, 62, made the confession Thursday on SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live, explaining that he hoped the shocking onstage altercation would finally erase his own decades-old Academy Awards embarrassment from public memory.
“When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, I was the only person happy. Because I was like, ‘Oh, good. So now that’s the worst moment in Oscar history,'” Lowe said on the radio show.
“But it turns out not really. Turns out I still am dragged, dragged every year.”
Lowe revealed that the mockery persists even now, nearly four decades after his infamous 1989 performance. “This year even, I guess some people didn’t love some of the Emmys and they were like, ‘At least it wasn’t Rob.’ It’s like, guys, there should be a statute of limitations,” he continued on the program.
The “Parks and Recreation” alum was referring to his widely panned opening number at the 61st Academy Awards, which he himself labeled “the worst opening ever” during Thursday’s appearance.
That 1989 broadcast featured a young Lowe performing an extended musical routine alongside actress Eileen Bowman, who appeared dressed as Snow White. The pair sang altered lyrics to popular songs, including a reworked “Proud Mary” with lines like “rollin’, rollin’, keep the cameras rollin’.”
The performance drew immediate scorn and became enshrined as one of the most embarrassing moments in television history. Dozens of prominent Hollywood figures, including former Academy President Gregory Peck, signed a letter denouncing the number. Disney filed suit over the unauthorized use of their character. The fallout effectively ended the Hollywood career of producer Allan Carr, who had overseen that year’s ceremony.
No Oscars moment proved so controversial again until the 2022 ceremony, when Smith strode onstage during the live broadcast and slapped Rock, who was hosting that year. The incident erupted after Rock, while presenting Best Documentary, directed a joke at Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith regarding her shaved head. “G.I. Jane 2, can’t wait to see it,” Rock quipped, referencing the actress’s buzz cut, which stemmed from her alopecia diagnosis.
Smith, the “Men in Black” star, marched up and struck a visibly stunned Rock across the face, then returned to his seat and shouted, “Keep my wife’s name out of your f–king mouth.”
The Academy responded by banning Smith from the Oscars and all Academy events for ten years. The day after the slap, Smith posted an apology to Rock on social media, writing, “I was out of line and I was wrong.”
Lowe’s Thursday remarks mark a rare instance of a Hollywood figure openly confessing personal relief at another star’s public downfall, however self-deprecating the framing. His candor about the lingering sting of his 1989 humiliation underscores how thoroughly that single performance has shadowed his otherwise lengthy career in film and television.
Despite Lowe’s hopes, the Smith-Rock confrontation has not displaced his own Oscars infamy in the public imagination. The annual recurrence of jokes at his expense, which he cited reaching even this year’s Emmy commentary, suggests the Snow White debacle retains its grip on Hollywood lore.