Rock took it in stride. The audience was laughing, after all, and even Will seemed to be—but Jada was not amused. So Rock carried on with his routine, and when Smith got out of his seat and started striding towards him, Rock responded with an exaggerated “Uh oh!” like a class clown who sees the teacher headed his way. But Smith wasn’t playing along. He stalked right up to Rock and slapped him across the face.

“Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me,” Rock said.

What happened after that was chaos. The sound went dead for close to a minute—longer even than the broadcast’s moment of silence for Ukraine—but what Smith was shouting at Rock was clear enough: “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth.” (Clips from countries where the broadcast wasn’t bleeped quickly circulated on Twitter and confirmed he said it, twice.)