GENERAL PRESS 24
Chris Rock’s latest comedy special has come and gone and left a lot more people divided on the Oscar slap than ever before. While many were immediately outraged with Will Smith and even called to have him canceled, Rock has proved in the year since that maybe he is a bit too harsh on the Smith clan. Let’s take a look at some of the family’s responses in regards to the viral moment.
Chris Rock maintains that Will Smith’s slap had nothing to do with him and everything to do with Smith’s pent-up embarrassment over Jada Pinkett Smith’s “entanglement” with Jaden Smith’s friend August Alsina. Despite this complicated truth, their kids have never turned their backs on their parents. Jada Pinkett’s daughters and Red Table Talk co-host Willow Smith defended her dad pretty early on following the slap. According to Willow, her family is human, and she could never be upset at them for behaving as such. “I see my whole family as being human, and I love and accept them for all their humanness,” she told Billboard last year.
Willow went on to say that due to their celebrity, she and her family are often expected to not act like real people. However, she feel that pretending to be perfect is not healthy for her or her folks and hoped people would learn to let them lead healthy human lives full of mistakes. Jaden Smith appeared proud of his father defending his mother. The Pursuit of Happyness star tweeted, “and that’s how we do it,” following the incident, which many took to mean he supported his father’s decision. Fans also circulated a tweet from him that read, “praying for peace in the world.”
Jada was the catalyst for the slap and decided to use the moment as a chance to educate her Red Table Talk followers on alopecia. The host did not take any accountability for the assault, instead creating space for Will Smith and Chris Rock to hash things out if/when they decided too. She told fans that we were in a season of healing. Jada said she preferred to use the moment to center alopecia suffers instead of focusing on the slap because so many of them reached out to her. “My deepest hope is that these two intelligent, capable men have a chance to heal, talk and reconcile.”
Someone “close to” Jada released a very different statement on her and Rock’s relationship following Rock’s stand-up special. According to sources, they claim that Chris has been obsessed with Jada for years. Fans have resurfaced show footage from the ’90s of him mocking her speech at the Million Woman’s March. The source told People, “Jada has had no part in all of this other than being heckled. Chris is obsessed with her, and that’s been going on for almost 30 years.”
Others point to Chris Rock having his stand-up special in Jada’s hometown of Baltimore as another red flag. In his special, Chris pointed out that he took it personally when Jada asked black actors to boycott the Oscars on a year he was hosting because Will Smith did not get a nomination she thought he deserved.
Will Smith has remained silent since the comedy special premiered. The actor will not be attending this years Academy Awards due to his 10-year suspension.
