Rihanna, Dave Chapelle, & Others Stand Behind Will Smith At Screening Of New Movie 7 Months After Oscar Slap

“EPIC night!! Thanx for coming to spot #Emancipation. Hope ya’ll enjoyed!!” Will Smith captioned the photos helium posted to Instagram connected Monday (Oct. 24), revealing the prime fewer who got to spot his caller movie, Emancipation, up of the Dec. 2 merchandise date. Will, 54, screened the movie for immoderate A-lister friends, including Rihanna and her boyfriend, ASAP Rocky, Tyler Perry, movie writer and black-ish creator Kenya Barris, euphony shaper Corey Smyth, personage stylist Fawn Boardley, comedian Dave Chappelle, and amusement mogul Tyler Perry. The 2nd descent showed Chapelle, 49, lasting among the seats of the backstage theatre.

“This nighttime was genuinely 1 for the books!” Kenya Barris, 48, wrote erstwhile sharing the aforesaid photos connected his Instagram. “An astonishing and superb radical of friends got unneurotic and witnessed TRUE ART. The speech aft was the effect of what thing and everything we arsenic creatives bash successful this manufacture anticipation for. Love you, @willsmith, and convey you for hosting.” “I’m inactive haunted by Emancipation,” wrote Tyler Perry. “It’s genuinely powerful, moving and captivating. And the speech afterward with this radical was legendary. Thank you Will Smith for the preview!”

Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Emancipation marks Will Smith’s archetypal movie since the now-infamous slap during the 2022 Academy Awards. The movie is based connected a existent story, pursuing Peter (Smith), an “enslaved antheral who runs distant from his plantation successful hunt of his family, outwitting cold-blooded hunters and surviving Louisiana swamps on the way,” per The Hollywood Reporter. The existent Peter became known arsenic “Whipped Peter” aft photographs of keloid scarring connected his backmost are distributed passim the country, showing the brutality of slavery, per Variety.

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Will Smith is presently serving a 10-year ban from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences implicit slapping Chris Rock during the 94th Academy Awards successful March 2022. “Mr. Smith shall not beryllium permitted to be immoderate Academy events oregon programs, successful idiosyncratic oregon virtually, including but not constricted to the Academy Awards,” the  AMPAS president David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson successful a connection announcing the ban. “We besides anticipation this tin statesman a clip of healing and restoration for each progressive and impacted.”

Smith issued a nationalist apology successful July. “I volition accidental to you, Chris, I apologize to you. My behaviour was unacceptable,” Will said successful a video posted to YouTube. “I privation to apologize to Chris’s mother. I saw an interrogation that Chris’s parent did. And that was 1 of the things astir that infinitesimal I conscionable didn’t realize. I wasn’t reasoning but however galore radical got wounded successful that moment. So I privation to apologize to Chris’s mother. I privation to apologize to Chris’s family. Specifically Tony Rock. We had a large relationship. Tony Rock was my man. And this astir apt irreparable.”