Within one week, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson has won both an Oscar and a Grammy for his documentary, “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised).”
Thankfully, when the musician took the stage at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night to accept the award for Best Music Film, the moment wasn’t overshadowed by an onstage slap.
“What a journey for this film since Sundance all the way until … last week,” he began in his acceptance speech before letting out a laugh.
The musician went on to give special thanks to the artists who appeared in the documentary, which takes a look back at the largely forgotten 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.
The film won the award over “Inside” (Bo Burnham), “David Byrne’s American Utopia” (David Byrne, directed by Spike Lee), “Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles” (Billie Eilish) and “Music, Money, Madness… Jimi Hendrix in Maui” (Jimi Hendrix).
The previous Sunday, at the Oscars ceremony in Hollywood, Questlove won the trophy for documentary feature directly after actor Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock onstage over a joke about the “King Richard” star’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
Moments before Rock announced Questlove’s feature as the winner, Rock had joked that Pinkett Smith, who has publicly discussed her long struggle with alopecia, would star in a “GI Jane” sequel, an apparent reference to her shaved head.
After initially laughing at the crack, Smith strode up on stage and slapped Rock before returning to his front-row seat and yelling obscenities at the comedian.
Days after the Oscars ceremony, Questlove addressed the incident on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” where he serves as the frontman for the late-night show’s band, The Roots.
Neilson Barnard via Getty Images
Questlove explained that he “really wasn’t aware” of the slap at the time, adding, “Of course, [winning the award] happened in the cyclone of a whole other situation with two very good friends of mine.”
“It’s weird to say, because they tell you ahead of time, ‘This is your category,’ so in that moment you’re either going to be full of anxiety or, for me, I’ve been meditating for the last two years ,” he said.
His collaborators, Joseph Patel, Robert Fyvolent and David Dinerstein, however, were bit more critical of both Smith and Rock in the following days.
Patel said the two “robbed” the group of their moment on stage and took issue with Rock announcing that the winner was “Ahmir Thompson and four white guys.”
“The reason that makes me SO SO VERY ANGRY is because I was so proud to be one of a handful of South Asians to have ever won an Oscar in the history of the award,” Patel wrote in a since-deleted Twitter thread.
He concluded the thread by adding that he was “angry at Will Smith. Angry at Chris Rock. Angry for me. Angry for Ahmir. Angry for my fellow filmmakers” and blasting Rock as “an absolute fucking dick.”
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