For the first time since Chris Rock was slapped, his mother has come out to speak openly about the incident.
Chris Rock may be waiting to completely confront getting slapped by Will Smith on the Oscars stage, but his mother isn’t.
The now viral incident occurred last month at the 94th annual ceremony, when Smith came on stage and slapped the comic after an offensive remark about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, whom Rock said was starring in a “G.I. Jane” sequel owing to her shaved head.
Rose Rock, a motivational speaker and author, addressed the altercation for the first time on Friday with local South Carolina television station WIS-TV, and she didn’t spare words when it came to the Smith family.
“When Will slapped Chris, he slapped all of us. He really slapped me,” Rose Rock told Billie Jean Shaw of WIS. “Because when you hurt my child, you hurt me.”
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The Rock matriarch stated that she initially thought the slap was scripted until Smith “started using obscenities.”
“You reacted to your wife giving you the side-eye, and you went up, and you made her day because she was bowled over laughing when it happened,” she said, adding that Smith “could have gotten taken out in handcuffs.”
Smith returned to his seat after slapping Chris Rock, telling him to “keep my wife’s name out of your fu**ing mouth.”
Pinkett Smith has openly shared her battle with alopecia, a condition that causes hair loss.
She was also offended by the incident that overshadowed the award that Chris Rock was onstage to present.
Finally, the comedian handed over the trophy for Best Documentary Feature to Questlove for his film “Summer of Soul.”
“No one even heard his speech,” she said.
“No one was able to just be in the moment because everyone was sitting there like, ‘What just happened?'”
Rose Rock said after the ceremony that she informed her son she was “proud of how he reacted,” before going on to accept the award and leaving without issue.
Chris Rock, who is presently on a cross-country comedy tour, has remained mostly silent about his reaction to the slap.
In an interview earlier this month, he stated unequivocally, “I’m not talking about that until I get paid.”
Smith, on the other hand, has been more forthright.
After posting a long Instagram apology, the “King Richard” star voluntarily withdrew from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, noting that his actions were “not indicative of the man I want to be.” He has been barred from attending the awards ceremony for the next ten years.
“Jokes at my expense are part of the job,” he added, “but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear, and I reacted emotionally.” “I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris. I was out of line and I was wrong.”
The apology, however, was insufficient for Rock’s mother, who said the actor has yet to contact her son personally.
“I feel really bad that he never apologized” she told the newspaper. “I mean his people wrote up a piece saying I apologize to Chris Rock, but you see something like that is personal, you reach out.”
