Mark Wahlberg has gotten more than he bargained for!
The actor and the organizers of the Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG Awards) have been under fire since he presented the award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture to the cast of the 2022 film “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” on Sunday night. Many believe he was the wrong person to award the nod to the predominantly Asian cast, given his time in jail for committing hate crimes against two Asian men in the late ’80s.
Twitter Users Display Their Disbelief At Mark Wahlberg’s SAG Awards Involvement
Even though the ceremony was filled with glitz and glamor, viewers of the SAG Awards were beyond disappointed when Wahlberg climbed the stage to present the nod to the “Everything Everywhere All At Once.”
Within hours, the event had become a hot topic on Twitter, with several people calling out SAG-AFTRA — the labor union responsible for putting the show together — for having the 51-year-old actor hand out that trophy.
One enraged person tweeted that having the “Ted” star handling such a moment was “extremely sinister,” especially since he is a “racist” who almost ended an Asian man’s life and took away the second’s eyesight.
Reporter Bonnie Stiernberg noted that “having Mark Wahlberg, who literally went to jail as a teen for committing a hate crime against a Vietnamese man, present an award to the cast of Everything Everywhere All At Once was certainly a choice.”
A third tweep found it “REALLY interesting” that Will Smith was not allowed to present the Best Actress award following his infamous Oscar drama, while Wahlberg was allowed to give “the ensemble award to a film with a predominantly Asian cast when he punched and nearly blinded a Vietnamese man.”
Journalist Jeff Yang joked that the “Father Stu” actor must have been shocked to “witness a group of Asians beating white people,” and a fifth recalled that he “chased after groups of Black children, throwing rocks and “beat one vietnamese man with a stick until it broke. he blinded another viet man. on his arrest he called them both g**ks and sl*nts.”
A sixth critic tweeted that it was good that the “Pain & Gain” star could stand on stage with “all those Asian people without assaulting any of them.”
Amid the ongoing drama, a few supporters stood up for Wahlberg citing that he had paid for his crime already, with one querying, “WHO DIDN’T DO DUMB SH*T AT 16. TODAY MARK IS A CHRISTIAN THAT ATTENDS CHURCH REGULARLY. THE PERSON FORGAVE MARK A LONG TIME AGO. THOSE WITHOUT SIN CAST THE FIRST STONE.”
A second supporter pointed out the coincidental timing between when the Golden Globe Awards winner “went on national TV and spoke about his faith and how unpopular it was in Hollywood” and his getting “canceled for past “hate crimes” against Asians.”
A third fan revealed how laughable it was when people attacked Wahlberg for realizing he was a “young racist dumba**” and decided to turn his life around, adding that it was good when people grew.
The BAFTA Awards Winner Pled Guilty To Felony Assault In The Legal Battle
Rolling Stone reported that Wahlberg’s problems began in 1988 after he was convicted of assaulting two Vietnamese American men while trying to steal some bottles of beer from them outside a convenience store. The actor, who was 16 at the time of the incident, had first used a wooden stick to knock one man — Thanh Lam — out before punching another man, Hoa “Johnny” Trinh.
Although he was charged with attempted murder and eventually pleaded guilty to felony assault, earning a two-year sentence, the father-of-four only served 45 days. It is worth noting that Wahlberg’s conviction was followed by another charge for contempt of court, arising from multiple incidents of him chasing and hurling racial slurs at Black school children two years earlier.
Per NBC News, he applied for a pardon to wipe the case from his record, expressing how “deeply sorry” he was for his actions and for “any lasting damage that I may have caused the victims.” To push his cause further, Wahlberg highlighted his philanthropy in the years following the assault as a primary reason for his record to be wiped.
“I want people to remember my past so that I can serve as an example of how lives can be turned around,” the nine-time Primetime Emmy Awards winner penned in 2014. Wahlberg has also apologized publicly several times for the hate crimes over the years.
