Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith came under intense public scrutiny last year after Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock on the Oscar stage after he made a joke about his wife.
The incident was heavily analyzed and became a pop cultural moment, with many criticizing Will Smith’s actions. Pinkett Smith recently revealed what Chris Rock, an old acquaintance of the family, told her right after the infamous incident.
Chris Rock And Jada Pinkett Smith Had A Rivalry Since 2016
The ‘Slap Heard Round the World’ was the result of Oscar host Chris Rock making a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia, which irked her husband Will Smith. The whole world saw Will Smith walking up to the stage and slapping Rock, and coming back later in the ceremony to win his first Best Actor Academy Award.
After months, Chris Rock addressed the slap in his Netflix comedy special Chris Rock: Selective Outrage. Referring to the ‘entanglements’ that Jada Pinkett Smith revealed in her Red Table Talks, where she revealed that she had an affair with rapper August Alsina, Rock said in his comedy special,
“Will Smith practices selective outrage. Everybody that really knows I had nothing to do with that s—. I didn’t have any ‘entanglements’…We have all been cheated on…None of us have ever been interviewed by the person who cheated on us on television. None of us. … Why the f— would you do that s—? She hurt him way more than he hurt me, okay?”
This was reportedly not the first time that Chris Rock had thrown shade at the Smith family. Back in 2016, Jada Pinkett Smith protested against the lack of any POC actors being nominated for that year’s Oscars.
Will Smith was reportedly campaigning for his role in Concussion but was not given the nod. Rock claimed that Pinkett Smith called him up and asked him not to host the event in solidarity. Rock reportedly made fun of Pinkett Smith during his Oscars monologue at the time.
What Did Chris Rock Say To Jada Pinkett Smith After The Slap?
The aftermath of the infamous slap was Will Smith resigning from his position at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts as well as being banned from attending any Academy events for ten years. Smith also released a detailed apology and mentioned that he had reached out to Chris Rock, who reportedly responded that he was not ready to talk about it yet.
In a recent interview with People magazine, while promoting her memoir Worthy, Jada Pinkett Smith addressed the aftermath of the slap and how she responded to it. Pinkett Smith had earlier mentioned that she did not feel it was real until Smith came back to the seat after slapping Chris Rock. She reportedly assumed that it was a skit.
Jada Pinkett Smith also revealed the conversation she and Rock had right after the incident. In a break during the 2022 event, Rock reportedly came up to Pinkett Smith to apologize. She said,
“Chris came down to the end of the stage and tried to apologize to me. He said, ‘I didn’t mean you any harm.’ I said, ‘I can’t talk about this now, Chris. This is some old s—.’ I thought this was [about] the Oscar 2016 and … their stuff that they had before I even came into the picture in the late ‘80s. I’ve got to leave that to Will and Chris to talk about, but they got their stuff for sure.”
Chris Rock and Will Smith had worked together in Smith’s hit sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, while Rock and Pinkett Smith have featured together in the Madagascar series.
