Almost a year after the infamous Oscars slap, comedian Chris Rock finally addressed what happened in his live Netflix special, “Selective Outrage.”
After an hour of new material, the comedian dove into what thousands of audience members had been waiting to hear, breaking down the aftermath of the on-stage smack from Oscar-winner Will Smith.
“You all know what happened to me, getting smacked by Suge Smith. Everybody knows. Everybody fucking knows,” Rock said. “I got smacked like a year ago… and people are like, ‘Did it hurt?’ It still hurts. I got ‘Summertime’ ringing in my ears.”
Despite the pressure from the press to open up about what happened, Rock is adamant that you won’t see him dissecting it on a talk show. “I’m not a victim baby, you will never see me on Oprah or Gayle [King] crying. You will never see it… It’s never going to happen. Fuck that shit, I took that shit like [Manny] Pacquiao.”
As for whether the slap hurt, Rock was direct. “Will Smith is significantly bigger than me, we are not the same size. Will Smith does movies with his shirt off. You’ve never seen me do a movie with my shirt off. If I’m in a movie getting open heart surgery, I got on a sweater. Will Smith played Muhammad Ali in a movie, you think I auditioned for that part? I played Pookie in ‘New Jack City.’ I played a piece of corn in ‘Pootie Tang’. Even in animation this motherfucker’s bigger. I’m a zebra, he’s a shark.”
The comedian went on to reveal that the title of his show was also inspired by the slap, “Will Smith practices ‘Selective Outrage,’” Rock explained. “Everybody who really knows, knows I had nothing to do with that shit. I didn’t have any ‘entanglements.’”
For viewers that might not have understood, Rock clarified the reference to the “Red Table Talk” episode featuring Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith: “His wife was fucking her son’s friend. I normally would not talk about this shit… I have no idea why two talented people would do something that fucking lowdown. We’ve all been cheated on, everybody in here been cheated on. None of us has ever been interviewed by the person that cheated on us, on television… She hurt him way more than he hurt me.”
It’s after this interview, Rock says, that “everybody in the world called him a bitch. I tried to call the motherfucker, I tried to call that man and give him my condolences, he didn’t pick up for me.” The comedian then went on to list off all the people in Hollywood who called Smith a “bitch” after the “Red Table Talk,” including “The View,” “The Talk,” “The Breakfast Club,” “Drink Champs” and so on. “Everybody called him a bitch and who’s he hit? Me.”
Rock also insinuated that bad blood between him and Smith family related to the 2016 Oscars, which he hosted, despite Pinkett Smith’s call for a boycott due to the lack of diversity in nominations. “She fucking said [I] should quit because Will didn’t get nominated for ‘Concussion.’ What the fuck? So then I do some jokes about it, who gives a fuck? That’s how it is. She started it, I finished it. Nobody’s picking on this bitch. She started this shit. Nobody was picking on her.”