More than 18 months after The Slap, Jada Pinkett Smith is finally giving some insight into what was going through her mind when it all went down.
“I had my own premonition right before the incident on the Oscar stage. It flashed through my mind as Chris Rock’s face came across the screen as one of the presenters that night. In fact, my stomach clenched,” she recalled in her book. “He had been known to take swipes at me — and from the Oscar stage, no less. That had been in 2016, six years earlier, during what became known as #OscarsSoWhite.”
“Trying to be optimistic, I told myself, A lot of time has passed, it’s the Academy Awards, there are no new misunderstandings, and I’m sure he’ll play nice. But another thought was, He’s not going to be able to help himself,” she continued.
“That was indeed a very light joke, as many expressed, but it was not about me. I was frustrated that the majority of folks can’t seem to understand how devastating alopecia can be. My heart broke for the many who live in shame, the children who have committed suicide after being teased and taunted by their classmates,” she explained. “And now the Oscars, in all its political correctness, was telling the world it was okay to make jokes at the expense of a woman suffering from alopecia?”
After that, Will stormed the stage and slapped Rock across the face. She told PEOPLE she thought the incident was a “skit” at first, thinking, “There’s no way that Will hit him.” She added that she didn’t “perceive the gravity of the situation” until Will returned to his seat and began to shout, “Keep my wife’s name out your f–kin’ mouth!”
She also claimed Rock did try to apologize to her in person that night, saying, “I didn’t mean you any harm,” but she shooed him off, saying, “I can’t talk about this now, Chris. This is some old s–t.”
“Why it fractured…that — that’s a lot of things … By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying. I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be,” she explained. “I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce. We will work through … whatever. I just haven’t been able to break that promise.”
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