Comeback kid: Can Will Smith rehabilitate his image after the slap?

Three years ago today, Will Smith accepted the Best Actor Oscar at the 2022 Academy Awards for the sports biopic King Richard. It was the crowning moment in a glittering award-winning career as an actor and musician.

As he reaches his Oscar’s third anniversary, Smith, 56, has celebrated the occasion by releasing his first album in 20 years, due out tomorrow, and through his home city Philadelphia renaming a street in his honour.

It’s also the anniversary of Smith slapping Oscars presenter Chris Rock on live television. When he’d pick up his trophy later in the night, Smith apologised to the Academy (not Rock) before being forced to resign and received a 10-year ban.

The slap – given in response to an unscripted joke by Rock about Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith – was all anyone spoke about that year’s Oscars ceremony. Smith’s actions represented a culture of male violence, an anti-comedy era, and a rare show of chivalry, depending on whose opinion you were hearing.

At the time, it impacted Smith’s career significantly. Alongside the Academy ban, projects like Fast and Loose were cancelled, while others such as Emancipation were delayed.

It seems that three years is enough in Smith’s eyes to change the narrative around that fateful day. Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker clearly agrees with him.

“Nobody gets an easy ride,” the actor-musician noted as a section of 59th Street was renamed Will Smith Way. “That was one of the things these streets of Philadelphia taught me: that there's nothing wrong with a hard day's work.”

On the album ‘Based on a True Story’, released 28 March, Smith confronts the controversial slap. “I’ve taken the last couple of years to really do a deep dive on the parts of me that may or may not been in that level of certainty and asking those deep scary internal questions,” Smith said of it.

‘Based on a True Story’ is Smith’s first foray into music in 20 years. Smith’s career started as one half of the hip-hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince before becoming an actor with his starring role in sitcom ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’. Between 1997 and 2005, he released four solo albums and further cemented his reputation as one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars with blockbusters Independence Day, Men in Black, and Ali.

Smith’s appeal was in his broad likeability. He was adept at comedic and dramatic roles, and his music was so inoffensive you could listen to it around the dinner table. It’s likely a big part in why DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince won the first Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance.

With the fifth album, Smith is trying to rehabilitate some of that broadchurch likeability. After the Oscars incident, public opinion swung against him. Stars such as Zoë Kravitz, Wanda Sykes and Jim Carrey all criticised him.

“I was sickened by the standing ovation," Carrey said of his Oscars speech at the time. "Hollywood is just spineless en masse and it really felt like this is a really clear indication that we aren’t the cool club anymore.”

He’s not the only star attempting to recover his public image this month.

Actor Jonathan Majors is also making a similar comeback attempt to Smith. This month, Magazine Dreams was released. It's the first film to get a wide release since his own assault incident changed his public perception.

Majors was on the cusp of a career zenith when it all came crashing down in 2023. After starring in a handful of critically acclaimed films, Majors, 35, was set to become the new main antagonist of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Kang the Conqueror.

All this ground to a halt with the revelation that Majors had assaulted his girlfriend British dancer Grace Jabbari in March 2023. Majors was found guilty in December 2023 and has been sentenced to a 52-week domestic violence intervention programme and probation. He’s also been accused by multiple other women of abuse.

As a result of the accusations and his conviction, Marvel parted way with Majors and he was dropped from multiple film projects.

After being picked up by Briarcliff Entertainment, Magazine Dreams release this month marks the first film to be released starring Majors since his assault. There’s a grim irony in its plot which features Majors as a wannabe bodybuilder with anger issues who assaults someone.

“I’d say to anyone who cares to listen: I’ve had two years of deep thought and meditation and rumination on myself and my actions, my community, my industry,” Majors said in a press interview for the film.

Both might be looking to the playbook of Chris Brown. The 35-year-old singer was a pop superstar when he pleaded guilty to his assault of Rihanna in 2009. If his next album was a commercial failure, by 2011 he managed to top the Billboard 200 with 2011 album ‘F.A.M.E.’ Since, he’s become one of the most successful R&B singers in history.

Whether Smith and Majors will be rehabilitated will ultimately depend on their respective successes. For all the work of movements like #MeToo, money has more sway in the industry than the perceived cancellation of abusive men.