Rob Schneider's Questionable Credibility: Comedian Claims Involvement in Will Smith's Punishment

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | June 14, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | June 14, 2024 |

To be clear, I do not care about “The Slap” anymore, and if we never talked about it again, it would be too soon. Likewise, I do not care about Rob Schneider, who only makes the news now when he’s booed off stage at a hospital charity event for making anti-vax (and anti-trans) “jokes.” And yet, there is something deeply hilarious about Rob Schneider — who clearly has no relationship with Will Smith — trashing the actor on some Australian radio show.

“Will Smith is a twat,” Schneider said during the show. “Will Smith has been hiding the fact of who he really is, and it was exposed that night that he’s really an asshole.” Schneider added that the slap was a “deep, dark thing” to do to Chris Rock, “a legendary comedian who’s literally the best comedian of our generation.”
Schneider, however, said that he couldn’t share his real feelings at the time because he was part of a committee deciding Will Smith’s punishment.

That’s where I’m confused. The people who made the decision about Will Smith’s punishment were the Board of Governors for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences. From The Washington Post:

The board that voted on Smith’s fate consists of 54 members: three from each of the academy’s 17 branches, which range from acting and editing to marketing and public relations, in addition to three governors at large.

Nothing on the Internet suggests that Rob Schneider was ever part of the Board of Governors. The members of the board are published. He was not a member in 2022 or 2023 or any other year on record. In fact, the first time he applied to be a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences — a 9,000-member organization — he was rejected. He was a member of the SNL cast and he was still rejected. It’s hard to imagine, then, that he was ever a member of the Board of Governors.

That is to say, I don’t know what the hell Rob Schneider is talking about, nor do I understand why he called the Academy “cowardly” for how they handled the situation, if he was in fact part of the “committee” that handled it. I think that when Rob Schneider called Will Smith “a liar” and a “complete, utter fraud” in that interview, maybe he was projecting.