It took almost a year after the incident, but when Chris Rock finally did an extended stand-up bit about that Oscars slap, he didn’t hold back. In a Netflix special from early March, Rock didn’t only tear into Will Smith for attacking him. He also had some thoughts about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, who, by making it public that she had a sidepiece, she, he said, “hurt him way more than he hurt me.” Now Pinkett Smith is finally responding to Rock’s words.
“I remember my heart piercing, my heart cracking, and I remember my feelings being so hurt,” Pinkett Smith told The New York Times while promoting her new memoir, Worthy (in a bit teased out by Entertainment Weekly). But she wasn’t bitter or even angry with him. “And then I remember being able to smile and wish him well at the same time.”
In her book, Pinkett Smith also shares that Rock once asked her out during a period when he thought she and Will were about to split up.
Pinkett Smith’s press tour has been a whirlwind, a geyser of shocking revelations. Perhaps the most jaw-dropping (or maybe not) is that she and Will have been separated since 2016, though they’re still technically married. She was even “shocked” when he referred to her as his “wife” during that Oscar acceptance speech he delivered about 20 minutes after attacking Rock on stage on live television.