We all remember this scene, we couldn’t do it any other way: Oscar night 2022 on stage at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood Chris Rock, comedian and awards show host, jokes about the baldness of Jada Pinkett Smith, wife of Will Smith, who is publicly fighting with alopecia. At this point, the unthinkable happens, because Smith gets up from his seat, walks onto the stage and slaps Rock before returning to the audience screaming, “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking lips.”
A year and a half after that shameful slap, one of the people closest to Chris Rock spoke about the consequences of this gesture for the comedian. In an interview with People magazine, actress Leslie Jones said she was furious after seeing the scene, finding Smith’s reaction unthinkable: “It was humiliating, it really affected him. People need to understand that his entire family saw that scene,” Jones said, adding that Rock “had to go to therapy with his two daughters.”
Will Smith, who won the Oscar for Best Actor that same night for his role in King Richard, resigned over the episode from the Academy, which, for its part, banned him for ten years. In the months that followed, the actor said he regretted the gesture, but it’s clear that the fallout from Hollywood’s most famous slap lasted long.
Tags: Will Smith, Chris Rock