Chris Rock has been at the center of a media storm since last weekend when Will Smith walked on stage and slapped him at the Oscars.
The jaw-dropping moment happened when Rock made a joke about Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, being in the next G.I. Jane film because of her closely shaved head.
Pinkett Smith - who has alopecia - did not take kindly to the gag. Nor did her husband, who marched on stage and hit the comedian across the face. When he returned to his seat, he yelled at Rock: "Keep my wife's name out of your f***ing mouth!"
Smith has been roundly criticized for his outburst and is even under threat of disciplinary action from the Academy.
But it seems that he wasn't the only person at Sunday night's awards show to feel insulted by one of Rock's jokes.
Joseph Patel is an Indian American filmmaker who won the Best Documentary Oscar alongside Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and fellow producers, Robert Fyvolent and David Dinerstein.
He has now called out the comedian for referring to him as a "white guy".
The Summer of Soul producer took to Twitter to criticize both Rock and Smith, calling out the latter for "[robbing] the category of its moment," per The Hollywood Reporter.
"I think what Will did was selfish. It robbed the category of its moment. It robbed the other excellent and amazing films of their moment to be acknowledged in what was a STRONG year for docs. And it robbed Summer of Soul and our team of our moment," he tweeted.
Patel then went on to say that - while Smith was in the wrong - Rock had also ruined the achievement by wrongly introducing him as a white person.
"What I didn’t hear in that moment walking to stage but was told of afterwards is what Chris Rock said when reading our name from the winner’s card," he wrote, adding: "WHAT IN THE ACTUAL F***?????"
He went on to explain that "the reason that makes me SO SO VERY ANGRY is because I was so proud to be one of a handful of South Asians to have ever won an Oscar in the history of the award."
Patel was the third South Asian to win an award that night, after Riz Ahmed and Aneil Karia triumphed in the Best Live Action Short category for their film, The Long Goodbye. "That’s never happened before! And it’s meaningful! It’s history!" he tweeted.
However, the Oscar-winner suggested that Rock had ruined the moment for his family and friends when he "lumped me in as 1 of 4 white guys," adding that he "didn't have the stomach to watch" the ceremony and likely never would.
"Thank you, Chris – You absolute f***ing d***," he wrote, adding: "What both Will AND Chris did really stained what should have been a beautiful moment for us."
Patel has since deleted his original Twitter thread, explaining that his tweets going viral was "unproductive" and that "I said what I needed to say and feel at peace with it."
