Will Smith Reveals What Really Happened The Night Of The Oscars Slap
Will Smith revealed to Trevor Noah that the night he slapped Chris Rock he was just "being human" and it took him months to forgive himself.
Probably the most watched moment in the history of the Oscars was not some actor's speech or a slip-up. No, that moment happened in March this year when Will Smith stormed onto the stage to slap the host of Oscars 2022, Chris Rock.
This outburst happened after Rock's gag about Jada Pinkett Smith's haircut. Will Smith's wife is suffering from alopecia, hence her bald head. This fact seems to be known to millions of movie fans except Chris Rock who cracked a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith taking part in a G.I. Jane sequel.
That tiny quip has become a breaking point for Will Smith.
Though King Richard star won the Academy Award for Best Actor, his violent behavior caused a wave of indignation among the viewers and organizers of the Academy Awards. The actor was banned from the Oscars for a decade and encountered difficulties with future projects.
He repeatedly apologized for his outburst, but Chris Rock doesn't seem interested in accepting any apologies. After the incident, Will Smith kept things low-key for a while, but now the actor is back to promote his new film Emancipation and explain himself.
Surely, no dialogue with Will Smith is possible these days without discussing his Oscars outburst, so the actor put on a brave face and clarified his side of the story in a recent interview with Trevor Noah.
Smith called the night of the 94th Academy Awards ceremony "horrific" and explained he was going through a rough patch that night, adding that it didn't justify his behavior. The Oscars winner stressed that he was only human just like any viewer sitting in the studio and going through their personal struggles.
Despite being one of the most successful and beloved Hollywood stars, Will Smith has a human side he showed in his last-year memoir called Will. In the autobiography, the actor opens up about his troubled childhood and self-image struggles. Smith told Noah that his tough past definitely contributed to his Oscars outburst.
"That was a rage that had been bottled for a really long time," the actor said. "There's nobody that hates that I'm human more than me."