Seth MacFarlane Praises The Way Chris Rock Handled The Oscars Slap

Comedian Seth MacFarlane is still weighing in on the slap seen around the world.

In late March, Will Smith stormed the stage at the 94th annual Academy Awards and slapped Chris Rock after the presenter made a joke about Jada Pinkett-Smith and her hair loss condition, known as alopecia. Many comedians have praised Rock for staying cool and continuing to go on with the show.

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the “Family Guy” creator also took a moment to praise Rock for the way he handled the incident.

“The Orville” creator has hosted the Oscars before and he knows a little something about using comedy to push buttons.

When asked about the slap, MacFarlane said, “I don’t think anybody could have handled it better than Chris Rock.”

“Of all comics to have that happen to, it’s a guy who’s universally beloved,” he explained. “Everybody loves Chris Rock. So if you’re gonna hit somebody… I don’t know.”

MacFarlane was also asked what he would do if he had gotten slapped while hosting the Oscars.

“First of all, the day that I did the Oscars, I had had about three whiskeys before I’d even walked on stage. So I probably wouldn’t have felt it much by that time in the show if it had happened to me,” he joked. “Look, comedy is in a strange place. I’ll say this: There’s a lot I read in the news and a lot I see on the news every day — obviously, right now — that makes me angry.”

“I have never felt that particular emotion after watching a comedy show or a sitcom or anything that’s designed to generate laughter, even if I think, ‘Man, that’s pushing it,’” he continued. “I don’t leave with that sense of anger — that’s what’s a little foreign to me.”

“Obviously, the Roe v. Wade situation makes me very angry, and I don’t feel that anger when I watch Dave Chappelle,” he explained, referring to the controversy that Chappelle has generated over his Netflix comedy special, “The Closer.”

“I’m having a laugh. It’s the old saying: Pick your battles,” MacFarlane continued. “I think if we can do a little more of that, we can maybe find that a lot of us can unify ourselves a little more. Not all of us, but those of us who can be saved are kind of on the same side.”

“There’s an argument that it’s easy to get mad about the Oscars. It’s easy to get mad about comedy because it doesn’t really require a whole lot of work,” he went on. “It doesn’t require you to know history or science or math. But to dig in and get angry about, let’s say, a harmful bill that’s making its way through Congress, that takes a little bit more work.”

“It takes some research, and it takes some reading and some effort, and we don’t want to do that,” he added. “It’s a lot easier to get pissed off at something a comedian says. So I do think that’s part of it. There is a laziness element to what we choose to allow ourselves to be enraged by.”

MacFarlane also briefly touched on the “Ted” prequel series that is taking up a lot of his time. MacFarlane explained that the new series is indeed a prequel that takes place in 1993.

“It centers around the period pretty shortly after Ted became kind of washed up, and he’s now living outside Boston with John and his family, and he’s forced to kind of make his way through high school,” MacFarlane explained. “So it’s a piece of Ted’s life in between what you saw in the opening titles of the movie and in the opening montage, and where we find him with Mark Wahlberg that’s a part of that story we haven’t told yet.”

“It turns out that it’s a pretty ripe area to draw from,” he continued. “Whether people still have an appetite for Ted remains to be seen. It’s a very specific kind of comedy, but we are allowing it to be what it is.”

Peacock gave “Ted” a straight-to-series pick-up order last June for ten episodes.