When Will Smith took it upon himself to walk up on stage during the 94th Academy Awards last year to slap Chris Rock over a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith‘s baldness, while it was easy to understand the catalyst behind the actor’s actions, no one knew the reason behind the comedian choosing the topic he picked to crack his joke. Now, Rock has opted for his live-streaming Netflix special Selective Outrage to let his fans know that there’s some history to it.
When Chris Rock was on stage presenting at the Oscars, he was supposed to tell jokes and he did. The one that keeps getting talked about because it resulted in a viral meme including Will Smith goes a little something like this, “Jada, I love ya. G.I. Jane 2, can’t wait to see it.” She laughed. The audience laughed, and even the Fresh Prince actor laughed…at first. Then, it was like a switch went off in his head.
The fact is that not too many people knew about Jada Pinkett’s condition, which is alopecia areata, a condition that causes hair loss. She had shared this news on her show Red Table Talk, but a few fans must have missed that episode because even Chris Rock admits he didn’t know about it. So, that led to the Emancipation actor heading to the stage, walking up to Rock, and infamously slapping him in front of everybody.
But according to Rock, that’s not the first step of his feud with the Matrix star.
Instead of the joke about Jada at the Oscars being the ignition, Rock claims it all started years ago, back in 2016 when he was hosting the Oscars then, “Years ago, his wife said I should quit the Oscars. I shouldn’t host ’cause her man didn’t get nominated for Concussion. And then he gives me a [beep] concussion.”
He went on to say, “That’s how it is – she starts it, I finish it, OK? That’s what the [beep] happened. Nobody’s picking on her. She started this [beep].”
For those who don’t recall, 2016 was the year the Oscars were boycotted by some of the biggest names in the industry because the nominations lacked diversity. The #OscarsSoWhite campaign ran rampant all over Twitter and raised awareness of the issue, a hashtag that is trending again because Rock is bringing it full circle. Anyway, Pinkett Smith’s request to boycott the event with her could not change Rock’s mind and he went on to host the ceremony that year.
So, by his estimation, the actress should be blamed for the whole fiasco the world got to witness around this time last year. Well, so far, Pinkett Smith has not aimed a barbed comment at Rock directly but seeing that he wishes to continue their one-sided to-and-fro, everyone is expecting her to finally add to the drama with her own response.