A year after he was slapped on stage at the Academy Awards, Chris Rock on Saturday hammered Will Smith and his wife in a comedy special streamed live on Netflix, joking that he enjoyed seeing the actor beaten in his latest film.
At the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore, Maryland, Rock said he had been watching the slavery drama Emancipation just to see Smith “get whooped,” cheering “hit him again” and “you missed a spot.”
In March last year, Smith walked onto the stage at the Oscars and slapped Rock after the comedian made a joke about the appearance of Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. The King Richard star returned to his seat in the audience and later won best actor.
Photo: AFP
Rock had been mostly silent about the incident until the end of his hour-long special, when he accused Will Smith of “selective outrage,” also the name of his special.
The comedian said that Pinkett Smith had stirred tension among the three, in part by calling for a boycott of the Oscars in 2016 when Rock was the host.
Pinkett Smith said she was protesting that Will Smith and other black actors had not been nominated.
Rock, who is also black, joked about Pinkett Smith at the Oscars that year and again last year.
“She starts it. I finish it,” he said.
Rock also brought up marital problems the Smiths have publicly discussed. Pinkett Smith admitted to an affair that she called an “entanglement” in 2020.
“I didn’t have any entanglements,” Rock said. “She hurt him way more than he hurt me.”
Representatives for the Smiths did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Will Smith issued a statement of apology to Rock and to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group that awards the Oscars, the day after slapping Rock. The academy banned Smith from attending the Oscars for 10 years.
The comedy special was the first event streamed live on Netflix, which is testing the technology as it considers expanding into other real-time programming.
Netflix agreed to pay US$40 million for two Rock comedy specials under a deal reached in 2016, a person familiar with the matter said.
Saturday’s special was the second of the two.
Rock spent most of the show riffing on topics ranging from Britain’s royal family to the Kardashians, abortion and his dating life. He concluded by saying why he did not fight back when Smith hit him.
“I got parents, and you know what my parents taught me?” he said. “Don’t fight in front of white people.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS