It’s been over a year since Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars. Though Smith has apologized more than once and Rock addressed the slap directly in his Netflix special, Selective Outrage, back in March, some close friends of the latter are still bringing revelations about the slap’s aftermath to light.
Leslie Jones is one of those people. The Saturday Night Live comedienne, whose new memoir, Leslie F**king Jones includes a foreword from Rock, addressed her friendship with the Madagascar actor and the slap seen around the world with PEOPLE.
“For a long a** time, I was just mad,” Jones, 56, explained to the outlet, regarding her sentiments on the incident. “Chris Rock did a f**king joke. I know Will, too… I was like, you couldn’t handle that s**t afterwards? This is the Oscars. The whole world is watching. I was like, ‘Chris, when he got up why didn’t you run?’ I would’ve been running around that stage like, ‘Will, calm down. Jada, call your man!'”
She added, “That s**t was humiliating. It really affected him. People need to understand his daughters, his parents, saw that. He had to go to counseling with his daughters.”
When speaking on the backlash from Rock’s comedy special that mentioned the ordeal towards the end, Jones shared, “Everybody got pissed off about him doing a special. That’s what comedians do. Instead of us going crazy we f**king go talk about it on the f**king stage. Thank God we’ve got the stage.”
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7t7XBnmWcp51ku6bD0micp6yVp8Gitc2mnKesX6GytLjInmSjp56awG6vx6ugrGWipLCsecKorKerlaG2r7OMsKClpF2ouqrAx2amrJuRp8Buv8uap2ZpYmiBeIWQbmdrZw%3D%3D