‘GMA’ Weighs In On Will Smith Slap: “Awful, Unfortunate” And “No Excuse For Violence”

deadline.com:

ABC’s Good Morning America was clearly poised to lead off its morning-after Oscar coverage with the traditional feel-good moments of winners’ speeches and surprise triumphs, but instead the hosts offered a dour account of what no doubt will go down as one of the most shocking moments in Academy Award history.“Something that we’ve never seen before,” said GMA co-host George Stephanopoulos introducing the morning’s first segment about the ABC Oscar broadcast. “Something that is very hard to process: Will Smith, walking up on to that stage after Chris Rock told a joke about his wife, simply assaulting Chris Rock.

He hit him, cold-cocked him after that joke. Chris Rock composed himself, got it back together and gave out the award…”After noting that Rock did not file criminal charges, co-host Robin Roberts said, “But it changed the entire night.

It was a wonderful night of firsts and all that…”GMA‘s Oscar correspondent T.J. Holmes then picked up the coverage, speaking live from the new Oscar museum. “Robin,  this was awful.

It was ugly, it was embarrassing, it was confusing.”“On a night where this entire production, the entire Oscar show was done for the first time by an all-Black producing team, here we are leading off the show and the story of the morning is about one man assaulting another on the Oscar stage.”From there, GMA showed a quick taped segment on the incident, with Holmes reporting in voice-over as clips from last night were shown. “Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars, the tense moment happening just seconds after Rock made this joke about Smith’s wife shaved head: ‘G.I.