Jada Pinkett Smith is addressing the ongoing aftermath of the dramatic 2022 Academy Awards incident in which her husband, Will Smith, slapped comedian Chris Rock on live television.
Reflecting on the incident ahead of the release of her memoir, Worthy, Jada tells People that, like many viewers watching at home and in the audience, she initially thought the confrontation was staged.
“I thought, ‘This is a skit,'” Jada says. “I was like, ‘There’s no way that Will hit him.’ It wasn’t until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realized it wasn’t a skit.”
The slap occurred right after Chris made the joke, “Jada, I love ya. G.I. Jane 2, can’t wait to see it,” which prompted the actress to roll her eyes at the joke. Moments later, after Chris quipped that it was “a nice [joke]” after being met with some uncomfortable reaction from the audience, he saw Will make his way onto the stage.
Chris, who was chuckling, was then met with an open-handed slap to his cheek from Will. “Oh, wow,” he immediately reacted, as Will walked offstage. The sound on the Oscars broadcast suddenly cut out after Chris said Will’s name in reaction. And as the camera panned to the Oscar nominee back at his seat, though there was no sound, you could clearly read what Will shouted at Chris.
“Leave my wife’s name out of your f**king mouth,” Will yelled back at the comedian.
Unsure how to proceed, Chris said, “That was the greatest night in the history of television,” which was captured through ABC’s telecast.
Will later made a public apology for his actions.
Jada reveals to People that the first words she uttered to Will, once they were alone after the show, were, “Are you OK?”
Will’s response to that question remains a work in progress, something Jada discusses in her upcoming book, Worthy, set to be released on Oct. 17. She’s committed to standing by her 55-year-old husband, stating, “I’m going to be by his side, but also allow him to have to figure this out for himself.”
The mother of two also reveals that Chris came to speak to her during a pause in the live broadcast directly after the slap, trying to apologize to her for his joke.
“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**t.’ 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.”
Still, Jada and Chris haven’t spoken since that tumultuous night. “[Do I have] any desire to talk to Chris? Here’s my desire: I just hope that all the misunderstanding around this can be cleared up and that there can be peace,” she adds.
Jada muses that the true strife between Chris, Will and her began in 2016, the first time the comedian made her the butt of his jokes at the Oscars.
When Will was overlooked for his Concussion performance and the acting nominations recognized no actors of color, Jada was vocally in support of the #OscarsSoWhite movement, calling for a boycott of the awards show.
Chris, who was hosting the Oscars that year, made jokes about Jada in his monologue. He later claimed in his Netflix comedy special earlier this year that Jada told him he should quit the hosting gig out of solidarity.
“I think that there might be some misunderstanding between Chris and I as far as the 2016 Oscars. I think that he might’ve taken offense, which I meant no harm in offending. That wasn’t my intention. But I do think that there’s a big misunderstanding there,” she tells the outlet, admitting to “not really recognizing the level of pressure [Chris] might’ve been under” at the time.
Jada says Chris called her afterward in 2016 and she thought they’d moved on, “until 2022 came.”
When asked if she was offended by Chris’ joke about her shaved head, since it is a direct result of her living with alopecia, Jada remains diplomatic.
“I mean, that’s what comedians do,” she answers. “I would just have to say that I am not really here to make any judgment on how people decide to express themselves and express their art. I’ll say that several times I’ve had my feelings hurt, for sure. I’ve had my feelings hurt a lot by Chris. But at the end of the day, too, being in the spotlight, it comes with the territory.”
ET has reached out to Chris for any comment.
Worthy will be available wherever books are sold on Oct. 17.
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