Saw it just now. Yeah he fucked up and It was over the top but honestly, disrespect is disrespect. Plus that joke wasn't even funny imo.
I hear people all the time being disrespectful with a thin layer of humor and saying "it's just a joke". If you are going to go there, it's gotta be real damn funny, and you should make sure that woman's husband is never able to walk up on you, jic they don't think it's funny. You might get slapped!
I think his initial laughter might have been either one of those brainless automatic laughters-on-cue that is always expected on TV before realizing what was actually said, or the "oh-this-mf-really-thinks-he-funny" kind of, "oh-we-got-a-comedian-up-in-here" sort of, "oh-I'm-bouta-slap-the-brakes-off-this-clown" type of laughter. You know the one.
You could see his wife was upset by it, a lot of men were taught to stand up for their wives and families, never let another man get way with disrespecting them, and this was seen as an admirable quality. Maybe not so much now in our current Idiocracy-like times where everybody is expected to guffaw at any low-brow attempt at roasting, but once upon a time.
At least it was an open hand slap and nothing too aggressive. I gotta say tho Chris took it really well. Probably because he realized the second that hand touched his face, that maybe his joke was kinda disrespectful and not that funny.
Staged? Very well could be. Look at what happened to Andy Kaufman on Letterman. People didn't know that was staged until Kaufmann was dead! Either way I encourage celebrities to smack each other on stage at the oscars more, because what else is TV for if not my shallow entertainment? It was interesting enough for me to watch when the oscars aren't.