Chris Rock unleashed his true feelings about Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, and the infamous Oscars slap during his live Netflix comedy special, Selective Outrage, on Saturday (March 4). Throughout the hourlong event filmed at the Hippodrome Theater in Baltimore, Rock took subtle jabs at the actor, but in the last 10 minutes, he shredded the Hollywood couple with punchline after punchline.
“You all know what happened to me, getting smacked by Suge Smith. Everybody knows. Everybody f**king knows,” he said, jumping right into tackling the incident that took place a year ago. “It still hurts. I got ‘Summertime’ ringing in my ears. But I’m not a victim, baby. You’ll never see me on Oprah or Gayle crying.”
The “Saturday Night Live” alum has dropped a few jokes during comedy sets throughout the past year but otherwise has remained silent about the ordeal. On the other hand, the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” star has issued two public apologies to Rock and spoken about his error in little detail during his most recent press tour. Consequences for his actions included a 10-year ban from attending any of the Academy’s events, and the international box office star remorsefully resigned from the organization to further accept the repercussions for striking his peer onstage at the awards ceremony.
In his first Netflix special since 2018’s Tambourine, Rock really unloaded when he took aim at what may be a past rift between him and his Madagascar co-star. “Everybody who really knows, knows I had nothing to do with that s**t. I didn’t have any entanglements,” said the comedic icon. “His wife was f**king her son’s friend. I normally would not talk about this s**t… I have no idea why two talented people would do something that f**king lowdown. We’ve all been cheated on. Everybody in here [has] been cheated on. None of us has ever been interviewed by the person that cheated on us, on television,” he said, alluding to Pinkett Smith’s 2020 episode of “The Red Table Talk,” where the couple openly discussed her past “entanglement” with singer August Alsina.
“She hurt him way more than he hurt me… Everybody called him a b**ch, and who [does] he hit? Me,” said the “Everybody Hates Chris” co-creator. He reached back even further into his memory bank and claimed the actress told him not to host the 2016 Oscars. The couple of over 25 years famously boycotted that awards ceremony due to a lack of diversity.
He continued, “She f**king said [I] should quit because Will didn’t get nominated for Concussion. What the f**k? So then I do some jokes about it. Who gives a f**k? That’s how it is. She started it. I finished it. Nobody’s picking on this b**ch. She started this s**t. Nobody was picking on her,” alluding to his joke about her shaved head.
In the end, Rock dropped the mic with, “I loved Will Smith my whole life. I have rooted for Will Smith my whole life… now I watch Emancipation just to see him get whooped.”