On Wednesday evening, the Academy’s board of governors will hold an emergency meeting, where presumably they will discuss Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. Since that shocking event, many have wondered what punitive action, if any, the Academy will take toward Smith, a longtime voting member who also won the best-actor statuette on Sunday night. When Smith took the stage for the second time, he delivered an emotional speech in which he apologized to the Academy his fellow nominees. “I hope the Academy invites me back,” he said, voicing a question that had likely popped up in the minds of viewers and voting members alike.
So: Will Smith ever be allowed back? Or could the slap earn him a one-way ticket to the door, making him only the sixth person in history to be expelled from the Academy?
To answer that, we have to unpack whether Smith’s slap meets the criteria for expulsion. Per the Academy’s Standards of Conduct, members are expected to “behave ethically by upholding the Academy’s values of respect for human dignity, inclusion, and a supportive environment that fosters creativity.” The Academy is also “categorically opposed to any form of abuse, harassment or discrimination.” Its language is broad but pliable, able to suit a variety of situations that might arise in the future.
The context of the slap, however, makes the situation murkier. Smith, who has since publicly apologized to Rock, slapped the comedian after Rock made a bad joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s buzz cut. (A close friend of Rock’s has said he was unaware that Pinkett Smith has alopecia, according to TMZ.) The slap has since given rise to a loud, messy discourse encompassing race, masculinity, mental health, ableism, and, perhaps on a more shallow level, a comedian’s right to carte blanche.
Perhaps it would be more helpful, then, to examine the precedent the Academy has set for expulsion. In its 94-year history, the Academy has expelled only five members: Carmine Caridi, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Roman Polanski, and cinematographer Adam Kimmel.
Caridi, the first person ever kicked out of the Academy, was expelled in 2004 for making VCR copies of screeners and sharing them with friends and family, according to The Hollywood Reporter. One of the people he sent copies to was Russell Sprague, who shared the screeners online. Those copies were traced back to Caridi, who gave Sprague’s name to the FBI in exchange for immunity. He was later sued by Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros. Per THR, Caridi was ultimately ordered to pay $300,000, in addition attorney’s fees to each studio.
Caridi’s punishment seems somewhat extreme, in retrospect, but screeners were a major point of contention at that time. Just one year prior, according to THR, MPAA chief Jack Valenti had decided to ban all screeners in order to help protect film studios from piracy. Academy members were eventually exempted from this by signing an agreement not to share their screeners, which Caridi violated.
Weinstein, Polanski, Cosby, and Kimmel were all kicked out due to violating the rules of ethics of the Academy. Weinstein was expelled in 2017, just one month after an explosive New York Times report that saw multiple women accuse him of sexual harassment, among other claims. (Weinstein has since been found guilty of rape and is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence.) Roughly six months later, in 2018, the Academy jointly expelled Polanski and Cosby. The decision arrived one month after Cosby was found guilty of sexual assault; he was sentenced up to 10 years and has since been released from prison, and his 2018 sexual assault conviction was overturned. (Both Weinstein and Cosby have long denied any allegations of wrongdoing.)
Polanski, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to unlawful intercourse with a minor in 1977 in the U.S. and fled to France to avoid repercussions. His expulsion came after the rise of the #MeToo movement provoked a new look at his fugitive status. Polanski pushed back, filing a lawsuit against the Academy, which he eventually lost. However, Polanski’s lawsuit offered a rare glimpse at his unique expulsion process. According to THR, his team gave the organization’s governors a 450 pages of documentary materials, a copy of the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, and a video statement from Polanski. None of it worked, however, and the Academy upheld its decision to expel the director.
Kimmel, a cinematographer who lensed films like Capote and Lars and the Real Girl, was expelled in 2021, after a Variety report detailed his history as a registered sex offender. Kimmel had been arrested in 2003 and 2010, charged both times for sexual crimes against underage girls. (Following the 2003 arrest, Kimmel pleaded guilty to third-degree rape; following the 2010 arrest, he was convicted of a class D felony for failing to register as a sex offender.) He was quietly expelled from the Academy a few months after the article was published.
Unlike the five previous expelled members, Smith isn’t embroiled in a heady legal battle of any sort; Rock declined to file a police report against Smith, and there does not appear to be legal action in the works against the actor. Unlike the others, Smith is still considered an industry power player and a major movie star, who was supposed to ascend to a new career high at Sunday night’s Oscars. Expelling him now would probably inspire more debate and backlash than any Academy expulsion in history—making it likely that the Academy will ultimately turn to other avenues to resolve this debacle.
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