I’m telling you kids, don’t come to Hollywood.

I’m serious.

>> Oh, they eat babies.

That is not [ __ ] They love the taste of human flesh and they drink human blood.

>> Neil Armstrong guy.

Have you seen him on the talk show? Neil, I’m going to be the first man to walk on the moon.

>> Talk about a fish story.

>> Yeah, [laughter] >> man.

And they’re buying it.

[laughter] >> Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy are two major personalities in comedy who you simply can’t ignore.

They aren’t simply random celebs who chose to expose Will Smith for fun.

These are two of the most influential people in comedy history.

Jim Carrey virtually revolutionized what it meant to be a movie star in the9s with his over-the-top exuberance and willingness to be absolutely ludicrous.

Meanwhile, Eddie Murphy was practically influencing comedy before Carrie was even recognized.

Eddie Murphy, Delirious, Raw, all those stand-up specials transformed the game forever.

These aren’t bitter rivals attempting to garner attention.

These are two guys who established empires on their own terms and had nothing to gain and nothing to lose by expressing what they said.

>> For years now, talk show hosts, people on television, people in sitcoms have been hired by the government to throw you off the track, to distract you, to make you laugh and stuff like that, make you happy and docil so you don’t know what’s really going on.

I was sickened.

I was sickened by the standing ovation.

I felt like Hollywood is just spineless on mass and uh it just it really felt like, oh, this is a really clear indication that we’re not the cool club anymore.

>> For three decades, Will Smith was part of Hollywood’s exclusive club.

His movies made over 9 billion globally.

Studios would bend over backwards to keep him pleased.

Awards programs would lay out the red carpet for him.

The media regarded him as this wonderful family guy who had sorted out everything.

But here’s the problem with Hollywood.

When it comes to defending individuals, it’s not about friendship.

And it’s absolutely not about morality.

It’s about money.

As long as Will Smith was making those guys wealthy, nobody was going to say anything about his conduct, his marriage, or any of the crazy things he was doing with his kids.

>> Huh? You’re kiss.

Come on.

>> Are you okay? Are you okay? >> Oh my god.

This is ridiculous.

>> Because I was picking up more things from adults than I were from kids my own age.

And I look and I I go around sometimes and I hang out with other people that are my age and they’re just kind of [laughter] selfie.

I’m just like, dude.

Like, oh my god.

Like, can we talk about like the political and economic state of the world right now? Can we talk about what’s going on with the environment? Can we talk about? >> But then the Oscars occurred.

The standing ovation that Will Smith earned after slapping Chris Rock was the moment that shattered the enchantment.

It was so evident that the industry was valuing profit above principle.

They were cheering his toxic masculinity because the individual doing the violence made them too much money to condemn.

And that’s when Jim Carrey uttered something that almost everyone was thinking.

He stated he was appalled after observing Smith’s actions.

If you want to yell from the audience and disapprove or show a disapproval or say something on Twitter or whatever, you you know, you do not have the right to to walk up on stage and smack somebody in the face cuz they said words.

>> We all observed a wall of protection rise up around Will Smith.

Anytime anything unusual occurred, anytime there were whispers, anytime people wanted to ask questions, the business collectively agreed to look the other way because why wouldn’t they? He made them too much money to risk.

And that’s precisely what Jim Carrey was pointing out when he labeled Hollywood cowardly.

The standing ovation wasn’t about backing Will Smith.

It was about safeguarding the investment.

It was about delivering a message that stated, “We don’t care what you do as long as you keep making us rich.

” But here’s the problem about live television.

You can’t edit it.

And once that moment occurred, there was no turning back.

The corruption became evident.

>> It didn’t escalate.

Mhm.

>> It came out of nowhere because Will has something going on inside him that’s frustrated.

And I I I wish him the best.

I really do.

I don’t I don’t, you know, I don’t have anything against Will Smith.

>> Jim Carrey didn’t simply stop at criticizing the industry’s attitude to the Oscar event.

He went further and genuinely evaluated what he felt was going on with Will Smith personally.

And here is where it becomes very intriguing because Carrie in his normal intellectual fashion got directly to the psychological foundation of the matter.

He stated the entire incident wasn’t about protecting Jada.

It was about frustration.

Pure ego-driven frustration.

He spoke about how Will Smith developed this picture of himself over decades and he’s caught within it.

Carrie effectively termed it avatar.

this artificial character that craves continual affirmation that needs everyone to regard him as a guardian.

And when Chris Rock made a joke about Jada, it wasn’t simply a joke to Will Smith.

It was an assault on his avatar.

It was someone ripping back the curtain on the image he’d spent 30 years cultivating.

And his response was to maintain that image at all costs, even if it meant hitting someone on live television.

While Eddie was accepting the Cecil B Deil honor, which is essentially a lifetime achievement honor for his tremendous contributions to entertainment, he delivered what could be the most devastating joke in recent award show history.

>> Pay your taxes, mind your business, and keep Will Smith’s wife’s name.

>> This wasn’t simply a joke.

This was a planned barb at Will Smith.

And here’s why this moment was so awful.

Eddie Murphy doesn’t go awards events.

He doesn’t do publicity and he doesn’t engage in the Hollywood system in any manner.

He notoriously dislikes all these things.

He previously stated, “One of the reasons why I don’t go to award shows and stuff is the feeling of being in a room full of famous people who all want to win some trophy.

That sensation is such a weary feeling.

Everybody’s dressed and behaving false.

Just being in a room full of renowned people is just odd.

I don’t like it.

So, when a guy who has spent decades staying away from all this Hollywood nonsense suddenly decides to show up, accept an award, and then use his platform to take a direct shot at Will Smith.

People pay attention.

It wasn’t some comic attempting to generate viral footage.

This was Eddie Murphy, one of the creators of contemporary comedy, saying something that needed to be spoken.

You just sat up there and said 46 years in the business, 41 years doing movies and your career was a success because you kept Will Smith’s wife name out your mouth.

>> Yeah.

[laughter] No, I said that’s the that’s the blueprint.

>> Murphy lost best supporting actor for asterisk Dream Girls asterisk to Alan Arkin.

And what did he do? He stood up and went out.

People dubbed him a disgruntled loser, but Murphy’s reasoning was straightforward.

He wasn’t going to sit there and play the pity man for the cameras.

He wasn’t going to offer them his actual displeasure as material for their program.

That moment tells all you need to know about Eddie Murphy’s connection with Hollywood awards culture.

He believes it’s bogus.

He feels everyone is simply acting and performing and being something they’re not, and he wants no part of it.

So, when he eventually does show up at the Golden Globes to receive an award that he couldn’t really reject, what does he do? He uses it to call out the precise type of foolishness that he’s been denouncing for years.

Will Smith with his asterisk red table talk asterisk and his public displays of emotion and his tearful acceptance speeches is virtually the poster child for everything Murphy dislikes about Hollywood superstars >> with arguably one of the greatest if not the greatest living comedian Chris Rock got slapped in the face at the Oscars by Will Smith which was one of the craziest things I’d ever seen.

>> Now I need y’all to really hear that because Jim Carrey wasn’t condemning Will as a competitor or a hater.

He was calling out the system that praised violence because it came from a protected celebrity.

And when asked what he would have done if he were Chris Rock, Carrie claimed he would have sued Will Smith for $200 million.

That number wasn’t random.

He explained that the slap would live forever replayed, trimmed, memed, preserved.

The harm, he added, was irreversible.

>> He doesn’t want the hassle.

I I had for announced this morning that I was suing Will for $200 million cuz that video is going to be there forever.

It’s going to be ubiquitous.

>> And that tracks because once something like that happened on live television, there is no undo button.

So, how does the industry react? Now, here’s where it gets unpleasant.

A number of celebs rushed to defend Will.

A number of them kept silent.

Very few denounced the standing ovation itself, which is precisely the point Carrie was making because when violence occurs on the largest platform in Hollywood and the person guilty is still recognized, it sends a message.

And that message is the rules are flexible.

If you’re strong enough, there are consequences, but they’re not necessarily consistent.

Days later, the Academy announced that Will Smith was barred from attending the Oscars for 10 years.

But even that came with a caveat.

He retained the Oscar.

He wasn’t stripped of the honor.

And if you read between the lines, sources subsequently said that what truly worried industry officials wasn’t just the slap.

It was Will’s unwillingness to leave the theater thereafter.

So when Jim Car’s words went viral, the internet did what it normally does.

A video began circulating stating that Will Smith approached Jim Carrey in an angry video conversation, accusing him of humiliating him on live television.

The footage circulated rapidly.

But here’s the thing, it was false.

Fact checkers eventually proved the video was AI generated.

There was no encounter, no call, no covert showdown.

And this is essential because it illustrates how rapidly the story evolved from criticism to fabricated conflict.

In actuality, Jim Carrey never presented this as a personal quarrel.

He didn’t say he despised Will.

He didn’t threaten him.

He didn’t travel back and forth.

He blasted the conduct and what the industry reaction represented.

That’s it.

Now, what changed after the slap? After the Oscars, something changed.

Stories began seeping about Will having a short fuse, about near altercations that were previously brushed off, about incidents that publicists had discreetly smoothed over for years.

According to many stories, the smack reframed his image overnight from pleasant and controlled to erratic.

And suddenly, the dots people disregarded earlier began connecting.

the protracted rivalry with Janet Hubert, the carefully crafted family image, the silence surrounding Key Tales.

I’m not claiming every rumor is true.

What I am saying is that once the illusion collapsed, people began asking questions they hadn’t felt permitted to ask before.

And that’s why Jim Car’s words impacted so much because he didn’t simply condemn Will Smith.

He challenged Hollywood’s tolerance for conduct and compelled everyone to look at what they were ready to forgive.

>> Kidnapping children is not what great nations do.

We in America are misinformed.

Reality shows have warped our idea of what a hero is or what the truth is.

Remember that episode when Jada said she’d had a connection with August Alcena while she and Will were separated and Will was sitting there like he was this devastated husband who was going to forgive his wife.

The entire incident became a meme.

People were ridiculing their whole performance.

But here’s the thing that Carrie and Murphy point out.

This entire interview was a PR gimmick.

It was a premeditated move to transform their marital difficulties into content to commercialize their sorrow to make Will Smith a victim and a long-suffering husband who was going to forgive his weward wife.

>> You and I were going through a very difficult time.

>> Yeah.

>> And we decided >> I was done with your ex.

>> Yeah.

You kicked me to the curb.

>> I was done with you.

>> Yeah.

[laughter] We >> Marriages have that though.

>> By being the one who forgives, by being the one who sobs on camera, he controlled the narrative.

He became the hero of his own controversy.

All those bizarre stories regarding his personal connection with other guys suddenly were buried behind the hype of this interview.

And that’s what Jim Carrey meant when he spoke about the phony image that Will Smith has established.

>> I think that it it showed me that there were characters being played everywhere that you know that as an actor you play characters and then if you go deep enough into those characters you realize that your own character is pretty thin to begin with.

So, now that both Carrie and Murphy have effectively opened the floodgates, everyone’s beginning to ask questions that nobody wanted to ask before.

And that’s where we’re heading next because there’s a whole bunch of information that’s been floating about on the internet that now seems like it merits a closer look.

Let’s start with this man, Brother Bal, who served as Will Smith’s assistant.

And according to what Balal has stated, he walked in on Will and Dwayne Martin doing things in a hotel room.

Now, you may be thinking, why should I trust this? But here’s the thing with Hollywood assistants.

They see everything.

They’re in the vehicle.

They’re in the home.

They’re around when ordinary folks aren’t.

And occasionally when individuals leave those professions, they share personal experiences like this.

>> This is unlike him, right? So I I open the um door to Dwayne’s dressing room and that’s when I see Dwayne and having anal sex.

Will, >> let me process that for a second.

There was a couch and um Will was bent over on the couch and Dwayne was standing up killing him.

Murder like murder.

It was murder in there.

>> The reason these charges keep returning isn’t because individuals are making things up.

It’s because they carry some truth.

Jaguar Wright has alleged that Will and Jada undertake bizarre rituals in their house and that young guys who came to them for mentoring ended up bolting in anguish.

bisexual.

They do weird things in their house.

And young men have left their house [ __ ] screaming to get away from them in their mentorship.

She gay left that house [ __ ] screaming.

August the only one that stayed and I guess he was really sick.

He need a doll.

>> With my man Charlie Mac.

So Charlie was with me every step of the way.

First out the limo.

So Charlie has been with me, you know, 30 years coming up in the business.

So, you know, >> that’s a heavy allegation.

And she’s not some random person.

She’s someone who has made serious claims in the past, including about Diddy.

The reason I’m including this stuff isn’t because I have a vendetta against Will Smith.

It’s because when two comedy legends like Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy start making comments, suddenly all these stories that were buried start getting attention.

Here’s one that goes way back.

Alexis Arquette was an actor from the Arquette family and before passing away, she made a claim about Will Smith’s first marriage.

Will was married to Sheree Zampino back in the early 90s and that marriage ended very quickly.

But according to Alexis, the real reason behind this was that Sheree caught Will doing something very messy with his manager, Benny Medina.

Now, this was during the height of Hollywood’s silent era.

Nobody talked about this stuff openly and honestly.

For a guy whose entire image was built on being this perfect family man, having a rumor like this would be devastating to his brand.

But let’s talk about something that happened way before any of this recent drama.

Something that actually happened on a TV set in 1993 during the filming of Asterisk the Fresh Prince of Belair asterisk.

Because looking back, this might have been the warning sign that people chose to ignore.

>> And y’all need to get over yourselves.

You have a huge production company that you only produce your friends, your family and yourself.

So you are a part of Hollywood.

You are a part of the system that is unfair to other actors.

Janet Hubert played Aunt Viven for the first three seasons of Asterisk Fresh Prince of Belair Asteris.

And then suddenly she was replaced by Daphne Maxwell Reed.

And the official story, the one that got published everywhere, was that Janet Hubert was difficult, unprofessional, and wanted to be the star.

Basically, the classic Hollywood story of the difficult co-star.

But here’s what really happened.

According to Janet, she had a contract dispute.

She was asking for fair pay, and when she refused to take a bad deal, the machine turned against her.

And Will Smith, instead of supporting his co-star, led the charge in branding her as the problem.

In a reunion episode, Janet shared the whole story sitting beside Will Smith.

>> You know, words can kill.

>> Mhm.

>> I lost everything.

Reputation, everything.

Everything.

And I understand you were able to move forward.

But you know those words, calling a black woman difficult >> in Hollywood is the kiss of death.

>> Mhm.

>> It’s the kiss of death.

And it’s hard enough being a dark-kinned black woman >> in this business.

[snorts] Now, let’s jump forward to 2012 when Will was filming asterisk Men in Black three asterisk in New York City.

And this story is kind of wild.

So, Will Smith, despite having a luxury apartment in the city, demanded that production rent him a massive double-decker trailer unit.

We’re talking about a 53- ft thing that cost $2 million.

It had a full gym inside and was parked on the streets of Soho, blocking traffic, blocking businesses, and creating a nightmare for residents with noise and fumes.

When complaints started coming in, Will Smith refused to move his stuff.

This guy, who has hundreds of millions of dollars, who could have just taken a car to a nice hotel or used the apartment he already owned, insisted on keeping this massive trailer parked in a residential neighborhood because that’s what he wanted.

This isn’t just celebrity privilege.

This is a man who genuinely believed the rules didn’t apply to him.

That’s a mindset that develops when you’ve been protected for 30 years and told you’re too special in the industry.

But moving ahead, let’s talk about what happened after the Oscars slap from a legal standpoint because this is something Jim Carrey brought up that I think is worth exploring.

>> Jada, I love you.

GI Jane, too.

Can’t wait to see it.

All right.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

Wow, dude.

>> Yes, >> it was a GI Jane.

Keep my wife’s name OUT YOUR [ __ ] MOUTH.

>> CHRIS Rock could have pressed charges.

What Smith did was assault.

It was caught on camera and witnessed by millions of people.

But Chris Rock decided not to file charges to avoid the hassle of going through a legal process.

Especially when you’re a celebrity, it’s exhausting.

You become a target for trolls and all kinds of nonsense.

However, Jim Carrey had a different perspective.

He said if it was him, he would have filed a $200 million lawsuit because the video of what happened is going to exist forever and the person who assaulted you should have to pay for that.

By not holding Smith legally accountable, fans received an indirect hint that violence has consequences, but not if you’re rich enough.

There’s also this bigger issue of what this means for comedy itself.

Chris Rock is one of the greatest comedians of all time.

Eddie Murphy is another.

Dave Chappelle is another.

And what they all understand is that there’s this unritten contract between comedians and audiences.

The comedian is supposed to push boundaries.

The audience is supposed to laugh.

That’s how the art form works.

When someone walks up on stage and assaults a comedian for a joke, they’re attacking the entire craft.

And that should scare everyone who values free speech and artistic expression.

Chris is one of those comics that he and Chappelle are the goats and they’re like the youngest, oldest comics in the world.

They’ve been doing it since they were kids.

And I think, you know, the contract you set up with the audience is that these are indeed jokes and we have to embrace our freedom of speech.

>> Here’s what experts have been saying about Will Smith’s psychology because this stuff is fascinating and also kind of disturbing.

Doug Ellen, the creator of Asterisk’s Entourage Asterisk, tweeted something after the Oscars’ incident went viral.

He called Smith a gaslighting narcissist who made the entire night about himself.

And that’s a heavy label, but when you break it down, it makes a lot of sense.

A gaslighting narcissist is someone who manipulates situations to make themselves the victim, who twists narratives to serve their image, who makes everything about them even when it’s not.

And when you look at Smith’s behavior, it’s all designed to position him as the hero of his own story.

This is what Jim Carrey was getting at with his Avatar theory.

Smith spent 30 years building this perfect image, the Fresh Prince, the Family Man, the actor who only does uplifting movies.

And somewhere along the way, the image became more real than the person.

He stopped being a human being with flaws and became a product that needed constant maintenance.