Key Points
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Rob Lowe did an infamously bad song and dance number at the 1989 Oscars.
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When he saw Will Smith slap Chris Rock in 2022, he hoped people would forget what he’d done.
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Lowe was then a teen heartthrob who’d performed with Snow White.
Rob Lowe is still humiliated over the, um, musical number that he performed at the 1989 Oscars.
“The worst opening ever,” Lowe said Thursday on SiriusXM’sAndy Cohen Live. “When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, I was the only person happy. Because I was like, ‘Oh, good. So now that’s the worst moment in Oscar history.’ But it turns out not really. Turns out I still am dragged, dragged every year.”
Smith infamously walked up to Oscars host Chris Rock during the live broadcast of the 2022 event and slapped him across the face after Rock made an unscripted joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Ever the professional, Rock continued with the show following the incredulous moment seen by millions of viewers at home.
Rock joked that Pinkett Smith would soon be starring in the sequel to G.I. Jane, the 1997 movie in which Demi Moore’s character sported a shaved head. Pinkett Smith has been open about her experience with the hair loss condition alopecia.
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Lowe had his own terrible moment on the Oscars stage back in 1989, as he and Snow White — yes, the princess — performed “Proud Mary” with a cinematic twist.
“This year even, I guess some people didn’t love some of the Emmys and they were like, ‘At least it wasn’t Rob,'” Lowe told Cohen. “It’s like, guys, there should be a statute of limitations.”
As Lowe has recounted, he did get positive feedback from a comedy great.
“Lucy came up to me afterwards,” he noted, “and said, ‘Young man, I didn’t know you were such a wonderful singer.'”
He’s also had John Fogerty, the writer of “Proud Mary,” as a guest on his own podcast, Literally! With Rob Lowe.
“John Fogerty was watching it at home,” Lowe said. “And he liked it. He forgave me.”
And it’s not fading away from our collective memories.
In 2018, Entertainment Weekly wrote an oral history of the bizarre entertainment at the 1989 gala.
“The Rob Lowe thing with Snow White was so painful,” actress and former talk show host Ricki Lake, who was in another part of the show, said, “like a car accident that you can’t look away from.”
Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Deadactor Keith Coogan was embarrassed by his own participation but grateful for Lowe’s gaffe.
“Thankfully people don’t necessarily remember our nine minutes,” he said.
Lowe’s latest project is his movie The Musical, in which he did not sing.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
