The slap heard around the world took place on March 6 during the 94th Annual Academy Awards. As Chris Rock was introducing the Best Documentary category, he made a joke about Will Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett who was in the audience. The former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star initially looked amused but moments later, sauntered onstage and smacked Rock across the face to the shock of everyone watching the live telecast.
Since then, Smith has apologized to Rock, resigned from The Academy and been banned from the attending the Oscars or any Oscars-related events for 10 years. But people are more anxious to hear what Chris Rock has to say about the incident, though by the sound of it, it will be awhile before he addresses the slap publicly.
On Thursday (May 12), Chris Rock briefly touched on the subject during a show at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
“I’m OK, if anybody was wondering,” he said. “I got most of my hearing back. People expect me to talk about the bullshit, I’m not going to talk about it right now, I’ll get to it eventually, on Netflix.”
Rock has already made it clear he wants a nice payday to talk about the infamous smack. During a sold-out show at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio, California on April 8, Rock said he’d only discuss it in detail if he was getting a bag.
“I’m OK, I have a whole show, and I’m not talking about that until I get paid,” he said during his set. “Life is good. I got my hearing back.”
He did make a small joke about itshortly after Dave Chappelle was attacked mid-set at The Hollywood Bowl earlier this month. Rock, who was in attendance along with Jamie Foxx and several other celebrities, returned to the stage after the chaos had subsided and asked, “Was that Will Smith?”
The closet Rock got to seriously discussing the slap was at a show in Boston just a few days after it happened: “I don’t have a bunch of shit about what happened, so if you came to hear that, I have a whole show I wrote before this weekend. I’m still kind of processing what happened. So, at some point I’ll talk about that shit. And it will be serious and funny.”
