Comedian Chris Rock has discussed the infamous slap that he received at the hands of actor Will Smith at last year’s Oscars for the first time in a new comedy special released by Netflix called Selective Outrage.
In his final monologue of the comedy event, Rock, who described his assailant as “Suge Smith” (in a reference to notoriously brutal hip-hop record executive Suge Knight), says he’s been asked about the incident frequently.
“People are like ‘did it hurt’?” Rock notes, replying: “it still hurts!”
Though he insists he’s “not a victim,” and that audiences “will never see me on Oprah or Gayle crying,” Rock points out that “Will Smith is significantly bigger than me.”
“We are not the same size, ok? We are not. Will Smith played Muhammad Ali in a movie!” Rock exclaims, adding “you think I auditioned for that part?”
“He played Muhammad Ali – I played Pookie in New Jack City. I played a piece of corn in Pootie Tang.”
The biggest issue, according to the comedian, is that “Will Smith practices selective outrage.”
Because “everybody that really knows knows I had nothing to do with that s***,” Rock says, adding, “I didn’t have any entanglements.”
In 2020, Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, admitted she’d fallen into an “entanglement” with singer August Alsina, who’d been introduced to her by the Smiths’ son, Jaden.
“For people who don’t know, Will’s wife was f****** her’s son’s friend,” Rock explains.
“Now, I normally would not talk about this s***,” the comedian clarifies, “but for some reason these n***** put that s*** on the internet.”
Ultimately, “she hurt him way more than he hurt me,” Rock says.
Because her dalliances were known to the public, “everybody in the world called [Smith] a b****,” Rock insisted, before launching into a long list of the various celebrities and well-known personalities who allegedly referred to the actor using the derogatory word.
“Everybody called him a b**** – everybody,” Rock continues, asking “and who’s he hit?”
“Me — a n**** he knows he can beat,” Rock deadpans, adding, “that is some b****-ass s***.”
Though he admits “rooted for Will Smith [his] whole life” as the latter has “made some great movies,” Rock jokes that now he watches the actor’s 2022 film Emancipation “just to see him get whooped.”
“Got me rooting for massah,” Rock quips.
Addressing another much-discussed aspect of the slapping incident, Rock noted that “a lot of people” have asked why he didn’t physically retaliate to the provocation.
“Cause I got parents, that’s why,” he responds.
“And you know what my parents taught me? Don’t fight in front of white people.”
Attendees were clearly entertained by the anecdote – and the special as a whole. And the comedian’s decision to publicly address the incident for the first time means that on a cultural level, it may be possible to finally bring the chapter to a close, critics have suggested
But on the internet, at least, the desire to slap Chris Rock is apparently still quite widespread.
Some critics have blasted the performance as transphobic due to several jokes mocking the use of gender pronouns and disparagingly referring to detractors as “wokes.”
One disappointed reviewer condemned the special as “stunningly toxic,” and another critic at USA Today complained it was “mean, predictable, and boring,” insisting with no apparent sense of irony that “once you become part of the establishment, you can't really make jokes about it anymore.”