Leslie Jones says her boyfriend Chris Rock sought counseling after he was slapped by Will Smith at the 2022 Oscars.
“That shit was humiliating,” she said he said People. “It really hit him. People have to understand that his daughters, his parents saw it. He had to go to counseling with his daughters.” (Rock shares two grown daughters — Lola, 21, and Zahra, 19 — with ex-wife Malaak Compton-Rock.)
Jones, who watched the show from home that night, said she was “furious” when she saw the incident unfold on live television.
“You don’t know I was going to jump in the car and roll over there,” she said. “I was so fucking pissed off on so many levels.
She added that Smith, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the film king richard only moments later he was to attempt to make amends with Rock as he accepted his award. While Smith apologized to the Academy and his fellow nominees in his acceptance speech, he stopped short of apologizing directly to Rock.
The shocking moment at the Oscars in March 2022 came after Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, before presenting the award for best documentary. Rock suggested that Pinkett Smith is preparing to film a sequel GI Jane — which was seemingly a reference to the actress’ shaved head. (Pinkett Smith has been open about her hair loss due to alopecia.)
Smith took the stage and slapped Rock. He returned to his seat and yelled at Rock, “Don’t say my wife’s name!”
A day later, he apologized directly to Rock in an Instagram post. He offered a second apology via video message in July 2022.
“There’s no part of me that thinks that was the right way to behave at that moment,” he said.
Following the incident, Smith announced that he was resigning from the Academy and banned from performing at Academy events for 10 years. However, he is still eligible for future Oscar nominations and wins, and will retain the Oscar he won during the 2022 ceremony.
Jones said she believes Smith could have “fixed” the situation that night while accepting the Oscar. He suggests that he might have said something along the lines of, “I shouldn’t have done that. Bring Chris out. I can’t accept the Oscar right now because it was so damn bad.”
Rock attacked Smith earlier this year in his live Netflix special, Chris Rock: Selective outrage!
“Will Smith practices selective outrage,” Rock told the audience. “Outrage because everyone knows what the hell happened. Anyone who really knows knows that I have nothing to do with it. I had no involvement.”
He continued: “His wife was having sex with her son’s boyfriend. Okay, normally I wouldn’t talk about this crap, but for some reason these n–s put it on the internet. I have no idea why two talented people would do something so low. What the hell? And we were all cheated. Everyone here has been duped. None of us have ever been in a conversation with a person who cheated on us on TV.
“She hurt him a lot more than he hurt me. Everyone in the world called him a pig. I tried to call the hag, I tried to call the man and give him my condolences, he didn’t pick up. … Everyone called him a whore, and who did he hit? I – and – he knows he could beat. That’s some bloody shit.”
Rock wrote a foreword to Jones’ new memoir titled Leslie F*cking Jones. The two comedians met in the mid-1990s and have been friends ever since.
“He’s like my brother,” Jones said of Rock, who also convinced her to (successfully) audition Saturday night life. She added: “He’s always there to give me the perfect advice when I need it.”
