“Black Panther” actor Lupita Nyong’o had a feeling she’d see her reaction to Will Smith’s slap of host Chris Rock again after this year’s Academy Awards.
Nyong’o sat behind the actor and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, during the ceremony when Smith smacked Rock following a joke about his wife’s shaved head. In 2018, Pinkett Smith revealed she was diagnosed with alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss.
“Keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth,” Smith yelled to Rock after the slap, as Nyong’o reacted with a shocked face behind him.
Nyong’o revealed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Wednesday what was going on in her head following the slap.
“Once the moment was over, I realized, ‘Oh my God, there’s no way all this transpired and I’m not in the shot,’” Nyong’o said. “I knew as soon as it was over that I was going to be a meme.”
Nyong’o’s prediction appears to have turned out to be true, as several Twitter users pointed out her shocked look in the hours after the moment.
Nyong’o, however, kept mum about the rest of her takeaways from the moment that night.
“I don’t want to add any more fuel to that thing, quite frankly,” Nyong’o told The Hollywood Reporter.
