With the Academy Awards this weekend, one can’t help but think about last year’s ceremony. And last year’s Oscars will forever live in infamy, thanks to Will Smith getting onstage and slapping Chris Rock in the face for making a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. So will there be any reference to that altercation on Sunday? Most likely, but EW reports that Smith and Rock still haven’t buried the hatchet over the incident, so maybe it’s too soon for the Academy to joke about it.
READ MORE: Chris Rock On Will Smith’s Oscar Slap: “I’m Not A Victim” But “That Sh*t Hurt”
A source told People that Smith “has felt terrible for so long” over the onscreen altercation but still hasn’t been able to make good with Rock. “He’s tried unsuccessfully to make amends in the best way he could with Chris,” said the source. “But beyond that, family is important to him. It all has helped him look inside and mature. He is better but still remorseful.”
Smith won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in “King Richard” shortly after he slapped Rock, but the fallout from his actions has been disastrous. Outside of a ten-year ban from Oscar ceremonies, Smith severely damaged his public reputation, and hasn’t signed on for any upcoming acting projects. His only role since the incident is in the slavery drama “Emancipation,” which Apple quietly released last December to muted critical reception and little fanfare.
Meanwhile, Rock remained quiet about the incident in the months after the Oscars last year, but finally broke his silence about it in his new Netflix special “Selective Outrage.” The stand-up special is Netflix’s first live-streamed event, and Rock took it as an opportunity to unleash his thoughts on Smith’s actions. In the final part of the show, Rock took down both Smith and Pinkett Smith, call them “b*tches,” and joking that he only watched “Emancipation” so he could watch Smith’s slave “get whooped.”
“Will Smith has selective outrage,” Rock said during the show, “Everyboody that really knows knows I had nothing to do with that s*it. I didn’t have any ‘entanglements.'” Rock’s comments allude to the headlines about Pinkett Smith’s affair she had with a friend of her and Smith’s son. The couple openly discussed the affair on an episode of Pinkett Smiths’ “Red Table Talk” in 2020.
Rock didn’t hold back during his live special. “She hurt him way more than he hurt me,” he continued. “Everybody called him a b*tch and who did he hit? Me.” To close out his set, Rock said, “A lot of people go ‘Chris, how come you didn’t do nothing back, how come you didn’t do nothing back that night?’ ‘Cause I got parents, that’s why. Cause I was raised. I got parents and you know what my parents taught me? Don’t fight in front of white people!”
So, consider the mic dropped, and don’t expect Rock and Smith to make amends any time soon. As for the Oscars this Sunday, hopefully another actor won’t destroy their career by doing something disastrous.