Out of all the people we'd expect to hear speak up about the Chris Rock and Will Smith was pretty low down on our list. (Just because he's a singer, not an actor.) But the former One Direction star gave his thoughts to Good Morning Britain as he made his way down the red carpet to the famous Vanity Fair after party.
But Liam, who used to live in Wolverhampton, has a connection to the stars - as he revealed that he used to live near Will. 'Will Smith actually used to live behind my house, I’ve had the pleasure of knowing his son and his daughter very well. We did Men In Black III with him,' he started off, before becoming a bit philosophical: ‘I believe whatever he felt that he did, he had the right to do. I also felt there were three losers in one fight. He didn’t know, being Chris Rock, he didn’t want to do what he had to do, being Will Smith, and she did nothing, being Jada.’ Amazingly, he also later mentions that he met Chris Rock - when One Direction casually sold out Madison Square Garden.
But one thing that got everyone's attention - perhaps more so than what he said - was his accent, which sounded a little bit different to the Liam we used to know in One Direction. In fact, people on Twitter couldn't quite work out whether he sounded Welsh, American or Dutch. Watch the video below and try to decide for yourself.
Whatever his accent is in the clip, it is undoubtedly one of the most entertaining celebrity reactions to the debacle. As writer Ciaran Varley tweeted: 'Quietly the best piece of content surrounding the Will Smith incident so far: Liam Payne gushing like an LA wellness influencer about "one of the world's greatest emoters", in a hybrid accent of totally inexplicable origin + managing to drop in that he sold out Madison Sq Garden.'
In case you missed it, the most shocking moment of last night's Oscars was when Will Smith marched up on stage and slapped comedian Chris Rock, after he made a joke about Jade Pinkett Smith's hair. Rock was presenting the award for Best Documentary when he joked that Jada was starring in 'G.I. Jane 2' in reference to her shaved head. For context, last year, Jada publicly shared that she suffered from alopecia, an auto-immune disorder that causes hair loss.
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