Eddie Murphy closes Golden Globes speech with unexpected Will Smith Oscars slap reference

It's not over yet: the moment Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at last year's Oscars lived on into 2023 thanks to an unexpected portion of Eddie Murphy's Golden Globes acceptance speech.

As he accepted the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Cecil B. DeMille prize Tuesday night for his contributions to the industry, the comedy icon appeared to offer advice to "dreamers and artists in the room" at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.

"There's a definitive blueprint that you can follow to achieve success, prosperity, longevity, and peace of mind. It's a blueprint, and I followed it my whole career. It's very simple, it's three things," Murphy began. "Do three things: pay your taxes, mind your business, and keep Will Smith's wife's name out your f---ing mouth!"

Murphy ended his speech and he left the stage to a thunderous round of applause. In the Golden Globes press room, Murphy said he hadn't spoken to either Smith or Rock about the slap. "But, I love both of them," he told reporters.

Murphy's speech, however, didn't mark the first time Smith was named on the NBC telecast. After returning from a commercial break, host Jerrod Carmichael joked that "while we were on commercial, we actually presented Will Smith with the Rock Hudson Award for Best Portrayal of Masculinity on Television, so, please give it up for Will Smith, you guys."

Both entertainers' jokes were inspired by Smith approaching Rock live on stage at the 2022 Academy Awards, as the latter presented the award for Best Documentary Feature and, in an unscripted joke, compared Jada Pinkett Smith's hair — which was cut short as a result of the actress' battle with alopecia — to that of Demi Moore's shaved head in the 1997 film G.I. Jane.

"Will Smith just smacked the s--- out of me," a stunned Rock said during the broadcast. "Wow, dude, it was a G.I. Jane joke." Smith then yelled, "Keep my wife's name out of your f---ing mouth" as the comedian stood in silence, before Rock responded: "I'm going to, okay?"

The fallout from the slap was intense, with Smith being banned from attending Academy-sanctioned events for the next 10 years. He subsequently called his actions "unacceptable and inexcusable" in an Instagram post, and attempted to explain the moment on an episode of The Daily Show in November.

"That was a horrific night, as you can imagine. There are many nuances and complexities to it. But, at the end of the day, I lost it, and I guess what I would say, you just never know what somebody's going through, you know?" Smith told Trevor Noah. "I was going through something that night. Not that that justifies my behavior at all. You're asking, what did I learn? It's that we've just gotta be nice to each other, man. It's hard. I guess the thing that was most painful for me is, I took my hard and made it hard for other people. I understood the idea of when they say hurt people hurt people."

Smith previously addressed the controversy in a video released in July, in which he discussed his journey of "thinking and personal work."

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