Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s marriage has caught the interest of many in recent years, including Chris Rock.
“Every summer all the reports would come out that me and Will were getting a divorce,” Pinkett Smith told People magazine. “And this particular summer, Chris [Rock], he thought that we were getting a divorce. So he called me and basically he was like, ‘I’d love to take you out.’”
The call surprised Pinkett Smith, she claimed.
“I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ He was like, ‘Well, aren’t you and Will getting a divorce?’ I was like, ‘No. Chris, those are just rumors,’” Pinket Smith recalled. “He was appalled. And he profusely apologized and that was that.”
Pinkett Smith discusses the event in her upcoming memoir, “Worthy.”
During the 2022 Oscars telecast, Will Smith slapped Rock after he made a joke about Pinkett Smith’s baldness when he was presenting an award. She has alopecia, which is the reason for her hair loss.
So Will Smith smacked the shit out of Chris Rock over this joke and is not even together with Jada Pinkett 😭😭😭😭… this is embarrassing city boys down -1000 pic.twitter.com/l0SPqz4xsz
— Chombe (@Chombe1080) October 11, 2023
In an interview with People, Pinkett Smith expressed her opinion that there had been a “misunderstanding between Chris and I as far as the 2016 Oscars.”
In support of the #OscarsSoWhite movement, Pinkett Smith called for a boycott that year while Rock was hosting the awards show after her husband, Will Smith, failed to receive a nomination for his role in “Concussion.”
She now acknowledges that it’s possible she was unaware of the “level of pressure” Rock might have been experiencing at the time.
“I probably should have called him and gone, ‘Hey, are you okay?,’” she said. “And just know that although I’m speaking out about the Oscars, I do wish you the best and I just want you to know that,’ me taking the time to have called him and said that, just to touch base. But his feelings might’ve been hurt.”
After the 2016 incident, the two got in touch and expressed their regrets, according to her.
In an effort to make amends for the slap, Pinkett Smith claimed that Rock made an attempt to speak with her during a break in the 2022 Oscars ceremony.
“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,’” she told People. “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.”
Jada Pinkett Smith tells @People that she thought Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars was a skit:
“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.” pic.twitter.com/wkPjgRgBMB
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) October 11, 2023
Her memoir will be released on October 17.
