Oscars 2023; how Will Smith caused the 95th Academy Awards to break tradition as he starts his 10 year ban

It was a relative feel-good affair all round at the 95th Academy Awards last night, with not too much in terms of controversy dogging it as opposed to last year’s event. Though some have scoffed at the appearance of Cocaine Bear or Elizabeth Banks nearly faceplanting to present her award, there was nothing but big love as Everything Everywhere All at Once and Brendan Fraser picked up big awards.

However the spectre of Will Smith still haunted this weekend’s proceedings, especially when the Academy had to break a long-held tradition during the ceremony. As the recipient of the Best Actor award last year, it would have been Smith’s duty to present the award for Best Actress - however after being banned from the Oscars for 10 years, Smith could not fulfil that obligation.

Instead, in perhaps one of the more poignant moments at the Oscars ceremony (and there were a few), Michelle Yeoh was presented with the award by both Jessica Chastain, who picked up the Best Actress award last year for her role in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and Halle Berry, who was the first Black actress to win the Best Actress award in 2002 for Monster’s Ball.

Fitting then, despite having to break tradition, that the first Black actress celebrated on stage with the first Asian actress to win the biggest female acting award at the ceremony. In a move that some considered a “torch passing” between one performer of ethnicity to another, as Berry remarked before the ceremony her disappointment at being the only actress of colour to have won the Best Actress award thus far.

Speaking to the New York Times in March 2022, Berry said “back in those days, if you didn’t win the [Golden] Globe, you really didn’t get the Academy Award, so I’d pretty much resigned myself to believing, ‘It’s great to be here, but I’m not going to win.'"

Despite winning the award, she felt that "it didn’t open the door. The fact that there’s no one standing next to me is heart-breaking." That lonely place is now occupied by both Berry and Yeoh after the stunning win for the Everything Everywhere All at Once actress.