Chris Rock Asked Jada Pinkett Smith Out Long Before Will Smith Slapped Him at Oscars
One of the most accomplished actors in the business, Jada Pinkett Smith, has also established herself as a popular talk show host of the Facebook Watch chat show Red Table Talk, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award. The actress has been sharing some stunning truths about her life with the public in anticipation of the release of her book Worthy on October 17, 2023.
Jada Pinkett Smith continued to talk about the historic Oscar incident involving her husband Will Smith and actor-comedian Chris Rock as she surprised the public by revealing that she and Will Smith had been apart for the past seven years. Let’s learn more.
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Jada Pinkett Smith says Chris Rock asked her out years ago
During an interview with People magazine, ahead of her book’s launch, Jada Pinkett Smith shared the fact that Chris Rock had asked her out on a date years ago when there was news about Will Smith and her heading for divorce. She said,
“I think every summer all the reports would come out that me and Will were getting a divorce. And this particular summer, Chris, 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 actress continued that she asked him what he meant by saying that he’d love to take her out, to which the comedian replied, “‘Well, aren’t you and Will getting a divorce?’’ Jada said she told him that the rumors about them heading for a divorce were just rumors and he profusely apologized to the actress.
Jada Pinkett Smith, however, also revealed during the interview that she hasn’t spoken to the comedian since the 2022 Academy Awards incident where he made fun of her shaved head and then her husband Will Smith walked up to the stage and slapped him.
Talking about the same, she said, “[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.” Chris Rocks’s joke was divisive because of the actress’ alopecia.
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Jada Pinkett Smith thought the Oscar slap was a ‘skit’
The actress shared with People magazine during the conversation that she thought that the entire slap thing was a skit and there was no way Will Smith would hit Chris Rock. She explained,
“It wasn’t until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realized it wasn’t a skit.”
The actress also went on to reveal that Chris Rock had attempted to come up to her and apologize after the incident, to which she only said to him that she could not talk about that at that moment.
“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 shit.’ 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.”
Back in 2016, the talk show host had publicly protested against the Academy Awards amid the #OscarsSoWhite controversy as the Academy failed to nominate a single person of color for the four main acting categories. Chris Rock was hosting the show that year and decided to make a joke about Jada’s protest in his monologue. She explained to the publication further,
“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. His feelings might’ve been hurt.”
Jada Pinkett Smith, however, said that they both spoke after the 2016 Oscars and apologized to each other, so she thought they were good and they didn’t talk since then, and then the 2022 Oscars stint came.
Jada Pinkett Smith’s reaction to the 2022 Academy Award stint
The actress whose memoir Worthy will be out on 17th October was once again asked if she got offended by the joke Chris Rock made which actually made Will Smith mad at him and hit him, which led to him being banned from the Academy for ten years. She said,
“I mean, that’s what comedians do. 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, comes with space.”
Smith had also revealed in an interview with Today’s Hoda Kotb that she and Will Smith have been secretly separated for seven years, clarifying that it wasn’t a divorce on paper but they got exhausted trying to make it work in 2016. She admits that they are both kind of stuck in their fantasy of what they think the other person should be, but added that she made a promise that there will never be a reason for them to get a divorce and would, instead, they will work through it.
