18 Emmy, Oscar, and other award show scandals that rocked the industry

Award shows such as the Academy Awards, Emmys and Grammys are meant to celebrate and reward the best of the best movies, TV shows, music and other popular entertainment. Seeing our favourite celebs and artists gathered at these star-studded shows is truly entertaining – but it doesn’t come without the occasional scandal (or two). From head-scratching name flubs to embarrassing winner mix-ups, these are some of the most memorable award show scandals that made people gasp and ask, “Did that really just happen?”

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We’re referring, of course, to the unmistakable ‘thwack’ of Will Smith’s hand hitting Chris Rock’s face during the 2022 Oscars. The incident unfurled as stand-up comedian was Chris Rock was onstage to present the Best Documentary award. He was telling jokes and roasting fellow actors when he told a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head that struck a nerve.

“Jada, I love you,” joked Rock. “G.I. Jane 2, can’t wait to see it,” Rock was likening the actress to G.I. Jane, a character with a shaved head played by Demi Moore in 1994.

Smith, the former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, laughed at first, but Pinkett Smith rolled her eyes and clearly didn’t appreciate the joke. The actress has alopecia, a condition that causes intermittent hair loss. She has been public about her struggles and she shaves her head to try to come to terms with her condition.

Seeing his wife’s discomfort must have spurred Smith to act. Within a moment he walked up to Rock onstage and slapped the comedian across his face. In the confusion and shock, viewers wondered if the incident was scripted, until Smith returned to his table, where he yelled at Rock with a voice full of emotion, “Keep my wife’s name out your (expletive) mouth!” Twice.

Later in the show, Smith nabbed the Best Actor Oscar for his role as Richard Williams in King Richard. During a tearful acceptance speech, he apologised to the Academy and other nominees, but notably not Chris Rock.

At the 2014 Emmys, many feminists, social media users and critics alike slammed a sight gag featuring Sofia Vergara and the Television Academy chairman Bruce Rosenblum. The joke literally placed the super sexy Modern Family star on a slowly revolving pedestal. With her curves on full display, Rosenblum ended his boring speech about the state of TV with what seemed like a justification of the ‘sex sells’ mentality. “What truly matters is that we never forget that our success is based on always giving the viewer something compelling to watch.” Vergara didn’t understand the backlash. She told Entertainment Weekly that she did not see the gag as demeaning. “It’s absolutely the opposite. It means that somebody can be hot and also funny and make fun of herself. Somebody started this who has no sense of humour.”

February 26, 2017 is an Oscar night that will live in infamy. Former Bonnie and Clyde co-stars Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty were presenting the Best Picture category. Beatty looked confused as he pulled the winner’s name out of the red envelope and tossed it to Dunaway who called out La La Land. The team behind the musical rushed the stage and started gushing, giving thanks, and suggesting that more people vow to make “bold and diverse” work.

During the second and third speeches, men in headsets started gathering on stage and inspecting envelopes while the faces of the cast and crew started to change. Producer Justin Horowitz then announced that Moonlight had actually won and held up the correct card. Shock spread throughout the theatre, Moonlight folks hesitantly walked up, host Jimmy Kimmel blamed Steve Harvey and suggested everyone get statues, and Beatty returned to the microphone to explain that he wasn’t “trying to be funny.” He had been given a duplicate envelope and card for the Best Actress In A Leading Role winner, which read “Emma Stone, La La Land” – Stone had received the award earlier in the night.

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Kanye West is no stranger to controversy, but when he jumped on stage at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards and stole the mic from then-19-year-old Taylor Swift’s hands just as she’d started her acceptance speech for Best Female Video, he took it to another level. Apparently, he thought his gal pal Beyoncé deserved the award for Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) more than the country-pop singer. “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you and I’m a let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time,” he said before returning the mic.

He was booed and President Obama even labelled it a “jackass” move. As for Queen B, she invited Swift onstage with her as she accepted the Video of The Year award later that night. The beef between West and Swift has played on for years as both artists made diss tracks, took to social media, apologised, gave and then retracted forgiveness, and so on.

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Host Stephen Colbert invited an unwelcome guest to spice up his opening monologue at the 2017 Emmy Awards. During a joke about making that year’s show the most-watched Emmy telecast ever, former White House press secretary Sean Spicer rolled in behind a replica of his infamous podium just as Melissa McCarthy, who was in the audience a few rows away, does when she portrayed him on Saturday Night Live. Spicer declared, “This is the largest audience to witness the Emmys, period. Both in person and around the world.” The joke referenced a lie Spicer was complicit in about attendance numbers at President Donald J. Trump’s inauguration in January of that year.

Hollywood and fans did not seem ready to laugh with ‘Spicey’ and many like Kumail Nanjiani, James Corden, Kal Penn,and Seth Rogen tweeted their disgust that he was given even a moment to redeem himself or look sympathetic. Harry Potter’s Jason Isaacs posted a photo of the “poisonous purveyor of lies” at the bar at the Netflix party and posted that he has the “aura of a giant festering abscess.”

In 2001, the LGBT community was up in arms over the homophobic lyrics penned by Eminem for The Marshall Mathers LP. When he was announced as a performer at the 2001 Grammy Awards, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) protested the decision. In response to the backlash, the rapper was paired with the openly gay Elton John for a rendition of Eminem’s ‘Stan’. GLAAD picketed outside the arena, but the musicians hugged at the end. Eminem couldn’t let it be though – he flipped the bird at the audience.

There is strength in numbers when it comes to this scandal. Actress Patrika Darbo’s 2018 Daytime Emmy for the Amazon soap opera The Bay was rescinded after the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) found submission errors in her category – as well as a few other categories. First, the Days of Our Lives alum spoke out against the Academy and demanded an outside audit. Shortly after, the four daytime soaps on main networks – The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless – banded behind her and sent a joint letter demanding changes in the voting and accounting processes and vowing not to participate in future competitions unless the issues get resolved.

Since this scandal, NATAS has released two Transparency Reports – one in 2019, and one just recently in March 2022. IndieWire reports that the goal of the Transparency Reports is to “provide context, insight, and visibility into submission, judging, and dispute adjudication and resolution processes for the Daytime, News & Documentary, and Sports Emmy Award competitions.”

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Wherever filmmaker Michael Moore goes, controversy usually follows. (Although in all fairness, he seems to like it that way.) In 2003, he took to the Oscars stage to accept the Best Documentary statue for his anti-gun film Bowling For Columbine and took the opportunity to get something else off his mind. “We live in fictitious times where we have fictitious election results, that elects a fictitious president,” he said of then-President George W. Bush. “We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.”

Surprisingly, Hollywood’s generally liberal elite booed and heckled the director. The abnormal reaction may have been a result of the general “rallying together against a common enemy” vibe, as it was not that long after the 9/11 attacks.

As host of the 2015 Miss Universe pageant, Steve Harvey had the privilege of announcing that yet another Miss Colombia would be taking the title. Unfortunately for Ariadna Gutierrez, he was wrong. Harvey returned to the stage to correct his error and she had to dip down and let the last year’s winner take the crown off her head and transplant it to a stunned Miss Philippines, Pia Wurtzbach. Harvey told Jimmy Fallon that the “four minutes of hell” were the result of a lagging teleprompter and misunderstood instructions being whispered in his earpiece. “It was the most gut-wrenching walk I’ve ever had in my life,” Harvey said. “I was brought up to face whatever there is, so I went out and dealt with it.”