Chris Rock has admitted he wished the situation surrounding the infamous Oscars slap hadn’t happened.
Rock gave a blunt response when he was asked how he felt about the incident, in which Will Smith struck him on the face onstage at the 2022 awards ceremony.
Rock told Variety: “Hey, man. You know, to answer your question a little bit, I wish nothing would have happened.”
The comedian then shifted attention onto his upcoming directorial release, Misty Green, which stars Rosalind Eleazar as an actor trying to make a Hollywood comeback who, in the film, has a physical altercation with a co-star.
“I don’t want to say anything that takes any attention away from Rosalind and how good she is in this movie,” said Rock.
open image in galleryHe continued: “It’s a crazy world. We walk by homeless people. There’s all sorts of s*** going on right now. Me having a bad day is not the biggest — it’s not that important.”
Since the slap, Rock hasn’t returned to the Oscars, and he told the outlet that he has no plans to go back unless he is nominated.
“I’m not getting nominated. The only way I’ll go back is if I’m nominated, and I’m not getting nominated,” he said. “And that’s OK. We’ll deal with that if it happens. Like, let’s manage expectations.”
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At the 2022 event, Rock was announcing the nominees for Best Documentary Feature when he made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head, comparing her to Demi Moore in the 1997 film, GI Jane.
“Jada, I love you. GI Jane 2, can’t wait to see it, all right?” Rock said. While some audience members laughed, Pinkett Smith appeared unamused.
The Matrix star has spoken about living with alopecia in the past, which resulted in her decision to shave her head.
Despite appearing to laugh at first, Smith then walked on stage and slapped Rock hard across the face before turning around and returning to his seat.
open image in galleryThe crowd was initially stunned as it was unclear whether the moment had been prearranged.
“Wow… Will Smith just smacked the s**t out of me,” Rock eventually exclaimed.
It soon became clear that the incident was not planned, however, as Smith yelled the infamous words: “Keep my wife’s name out your f***ing mouth.”
Smith won the Best Actor prize later in the ceremony for his role in King Richard.
However, the controversial moment resulted in Smith being banned from Academy events for 10 years and saw the Oscars put in place new crisis measures for the 2023 ceremony. The incident has been dubbed “the slap heard around the world.”
Elsewhere in his Variety interview, Rock said it was unintentional that his movie includes a physical altercation in the Hollywood entertainment industry.
The journalist told the comedian, “You made a movie about a woman who smacks her colleague, where you play a character that has to decide whether to forgive her.”
Rock said he hadn’t thought about the similarities between the Oscars slap and his movie before, saying: “Oh. Yeah. You know, I never even thought about it like that.”
He continued: “No. This is literally the first time I — that she got connected to — yeah.”