Diddy’s Saint-like Words on Will Smith and Chris Rock’s Oscar Slap – “You gotta go on that healing journey”

Diddy has been making headlines for quite some time now and as many already know, it is for all the wrong reasons. He is one of the most acclaimed artists in the music industry. However, even if half of the allegations made against him were to turn out to be true, all of the hard work that went into building that reputation could easily go down the drain.

Before all of this happened, Diddy was always seen as a charismatic individual who had a way with his words. He exhibited the same personality traits when he was asked how he felt about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards in 2022.

Diddy On Trying to Lighten Up the Mood at the 96th Academy Awards After the Infamous Slapgate

The slapgate at the 96th Academy Awards was one of those moments in the history of Hollywood when you just had to be there. When Chris Rock got on the stage to present the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, he made a joke at the expense of Will Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith, referencing her shaved head by calling her G.I. Jane, the 1997 film.

Pinkett Smith has been open about her struggles with alopecia, a hair-loss condition with which she was diagnosed in 2018. She was visibly uncomfortable with the joke. This made the Independence Day star lose his cool and before anyone knew what was happening, he marched up to the stage and slapped Rock across the face.

Smith returned to his seat and shouted, “Keep my wife’s name out of your f—ing mouth!”, a moment which has since become meme material. The entire incident left the attendees in utter disbelief and it loomed like a cloud over everyone’s heads for the rest of the night.

Right after this, Diddy got on stage to present a tribute to The Godfather and briefly addressed the situation, trying to diffuse the tension. On the Vanity Fair Oscar Party red carpet, he was asked if he just went with how he felt or if he had prepared what he wanted to say beforehand.

I was just as shocked as everybody else but I just went on how I was feeling. I thought it was very important to bring love into the room, you know what I’m saying? I think we know both of those guys’ characters, and sometimes sh*t happens. So we just needed to keep it moving in love and just keep it moving and stay prayed up; that’s it.

The Grammy-winning artist tried to do damage control to the best of his ability. A friend of his even told PEOPLE that the singer was trying to play the peacemaker at the event and even had to change his speech at the last moment to remind everyone that they were there to celebrate films.

Diddy Shared That He Was on a Healing Journey

Diddy put his personal music career in the backseat for a little while and took time to mentor other artists and further his other business ventures. So, he was not much in the public eye. In 2018, the demise of Kim Porter, the mother of three of his children, had a significant emotional impact on him.

By 2022, he was re-emerging publicly ahead of the release of his fifth studio album, The Love Album: Off the Grid in 2023. When asked how he was feeling about it, he told Vanity Fair:

It has been a healing journey. I lost the mother of my children and my best friend. And it was just like back-to-back things. And before you step outside, I wanna hibernate it for a minute. Before you step outside, you gotta go on that healing journey, and you can get through it.

He further said that the event was like a “healing journey birthday party” for him. Things seemed to be going well until late last year when his former partner, Cassie Ventura filed a lawsuit against him. He even apologized for his actions in a since-deleted Instagram post. It has been a downhill battle for him since then.