It seems like Will Smith, Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith’s drama goes way beyond the infamous Oscars slap in 2022.
Actress, and TV host and producer, Jada Pinkett Smith revealed in her new memoir, “Worthy,” that Rock, 58, asked her out on a date amid rumors she was divorcing Will, 55, a few years prior to the Oscars slap.
Jada, 52, speaking to People magazine ahead of the book’s debut said:
“I think every summer all the reports would come out that me and Will were getting a divorce.”
“And this particular summer, Chris, he thought that we were getting a divorce,” she continued. “So he called me and basically he was like, ‘I’d love to take you out.’
“And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ He was like, ‘Well, aren’t you and Will getting a divorce?’ I was like, ‘No. Chris, those are just rumors.’ He was appalled,” Jada recalled.
“And he profusely apologized and that was that.”
In 2022, Rock made a joke about Pinkett Smith’s clean-shaven head at the Oscars awards ceremony last year.
At the event, Rock laughed while presenting an award, saying that he couldn’t wait to see the actress in “G.I. Jane 2.”
Will Smith, who was sitting beside his wife, then walked up to the “Everybody Hates Chris” creator on stage and punched him in front of millions of viewers.
As a result of the fracas, Smith was banned from attending the Academy Awards for 10 years.
Pinkett Smith speaking to People, says she’s not spoken to Chris Rock since the scandal.
“[Do I have] any desire to talk to Chris? Here’s my desire: I just hope that all the misunderstanding around this can be cleared up and that there can be peace,” she sighed.
Jada who suffers from the hair loss condition alopecia, claimed she wasn’t that offended by the comedian’s comments at the time.
“I mean, that’s what comedians do,” she stated. “I would just have to say that I am not really here to make any judgment on how people decide to express themselves and express their art.”
“I’ll say that several times I’ve had my feelings hurt, for sure. I’ve had my feelings hurt a lot by Chris. But at the end of the day, too, being in the spotlight, it comes with the territory.”
Commenting on the incident, Pinkett Smith told People she initially thought it was part of a planned joke.
“It wasn’t until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realised it wasn’t a skit.”
She said: “I’m going to be by his side but also allow him to have to figure this out for himself.”
Also Jada Pinkett Smith revealed in a new interview that she and her husband Will Smith have been separated since 2016.
Though the actors were living completely separate lives for seven years, they were not ready to publicly confirm the news before, she confessed to NBC.
By the time they separated she said that they were “exhausted with trying”.
The pair still live separately, but do not plan on divorcing.
Pinkett Smith, 52, told NBC she had promised herself that she and Smith, 55, would never get a divorce and said she has not been able to break that promise.
“I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be,” she said. The interview came ahead of the release of Pinkett Smith’s memoir, Worthy, next week.