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Saturday Night Live: Watch as Benedict Cumberbatch Jokes About Being ‘Beat By Will Smith’ at Oscars

Looking back over the past year and career, Benedict Cumberbatch couldn’t help but be inspired by his career development while hosting the show for a second time, and being inside the Dolby Theatre when Will Smith‘s Oscars drama went down was particularly memorable.

“I am thrilled to be back hosting Saturday Night Live. It’s been a really fun, great week,” Cumberbatch said during his opening monologue. “I’ve got to be honest though because most of the sketch writers this week, they pitched me sketches every day, and most were about Doctor Strange. It’s great. I love the guy. I love playing the character. The film’s doing really well, but I have been in other films.”

The main star of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Benedict Cumberbatch, quipped that others don’t usually ask him about his other projects, such as Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog , which earned 12 Academy Award nominations earlier this year.

“I said, ‘Come on, man. I was nominated for an Oscar for that,’” Cumberbatch told SNL producer Lorne Michaels about the movie. “I mean, I didn’t win. I was beat by Will Smith. No, not physically!”

While Will Smith, 53, was able to walk off with the coveted Best Actor in a Leading Role award at the 94th annual Academy Awards, his fight with Chris Rock dominated the program and conversation post-show.

For his part, 58-year-old Grown Ups actor acknowledged during the broadcast that Jada Pinkett Smith — who married Smith in 1997 and has been bald for nearly two decades— might star in a potential G.I. Jane sequel due to her shaved head. As a result, Smith went onto the stage and smacked Rock across the face before returning to his seat.

“Keep my wife’s name out your f—king mouth,” the King Richard star shouted.

Before Smith issued his mea culpa and resigned from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Rock declined to pursue charges against him. (Smith was subsequently banned from the Academy’s events for ten years.)

Once Cumberbatch recalled he had lost the award to Smith, he continued on as host of the Mother’s Day broadcast.

“Of course, I want to wish a very happy Mother’s Day to my mum,” the Sherlock alum sweetly noted on Saturday. “She’s actually on holiday in Greece at the moment and SNL offered to fly her here first-class, and she said, ‘No, I’m on a beach in Greece. Are you insane?’”

Cumberbatch continued: “My wife, Sophie [Hunter], is in the audience tonight, and I’d like to wish her a happy Mother’s Day, too. Hi, Sophie. It’s me, your husband, Little Benedict. I’m constantly in awe of you. You gave birth to our three beautiful boys and that is itself a minor miracle as any woman would tell you, and according to you, I was off dressing up as a wizard though technically it was a sorcerer.”

Saturday Night Live airs on NBC Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET.

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