In preparation for the 95th Academy Awards, an actual “crisis team” has been deployed to ensure we won’t be remembering this year’s Oscars for all the wrong reasons a la the slapping incident involving Will Smith and Chris Rock that requires zero introduction.
“We have a whole crisis team, something we’ve never had before, and many plans in place,” Bill Cramer, CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, told Time magazine.
“We’ve run many scenarios. So it is our hope that we will be prepared for anything that we may not anticipate right now but that we’re planning for just in case it does happen.”
“We’ve opened our minds to the many things that can happen at the Oscars.”
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Cramer added: “These crisis plans — the crisis communication teams and structures we have in place — allow us to say this is the group that we have to gather very quickly. This is how we all come together. This is the spokesperson. This will be the statement.
“Let’s hope something doesn’t happen and we never have to use these, but we already have frameworks in place that we can modify.”
Almost immediately after the extremely public implosion of Will Smith’s reputation, the Hollywood veteran resigned from the Academy before facing a decade-long ban from the Oscars for his violent outburst, which was instigated by a G.I. Jane joke Rock made at the expense of Jada Pinkett Smith.
What followed could only be described as a spectacular fall from grace, tarnishing Smith family patriarch’s first-ever win in the Best Actor category (King Richard).
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While everything the man has endured should be enough of a deterrent, the Academy clearly doesn’t want to take any chances, hence the Oscars crisis team.
The forthcoming 95th Academy Awards is scheduled to take place on March 12th at the Dolby Theatre.
