Jada Pinkett Smith wrote a memoir, Worthy, available starting October 17. Judging by the excerpt about what went through her mind when her husband Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars, it promises to be a juicy read. Not only does she share what is was like to witness Will losing his cool and the onstage assault of Chris, she also reveals that she and Will weren’t even together at the time. What?!
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Yeah, she was there in the audience sitting next to Will, but she was not there as his romantic partner, she was there as family. The truth is that they had been separated for six years at the time. I repeat: WHAT?! Following are some excerpts from her book that are, quite frankly, bombshells.
She writes in her book that she had a ‘premonition’ right before everything went down.
“I had my own premonition right before the incident on the Oscar stage. It flashed through my mind as Chris Rock’s face came across the screen as one of the presenters that night. In fact, my stomach clenched. He had been known to take swipes at me — and from the Oscar stage, no less. That had been in 2016, six years earlier, during what became known as #OscarsSoWhite.”
What happened when Chris saw her sitting in the audience?
“When Chris came out to present an award, made some jokes, got lots of laughs, and, like comics do, decided to milk his time onstage, he saw me and my bald head and ad-libbed: ‘Jada, I love ya, G.I. Jane Two, can’t wait to see it.’”
Jada wasn’t upset for herself, but she still gave Chris a huge eyeroll. Why?
“It was not because of the jab at my alopecia but, honestly, about the people I had met whose condition was far worse than mine. That was indeed a very light joke, as many expressed, but it was not about me. I was frustrated that the majority of folks can’t seem to understand how devastating alopecia can be.”
But Will was pissed for Jada and he did what he did.
“He stormed onstage and smacked Chris hard across the face. It was such a surreal moment that many of us, including people who were in the room, did not think Will really physically attacked Chris.”
At the time, even Jada thought it was a staged bit.
Like many of us, when Jada witnessed Will slapping Chris, she thought the whole thing was staged. “When Chris was still standing afterward, I believed my observation to be true: Aha, this IS a skit,” she shares in her book.
Then the reality and severity of the situation became clear.
“It’s not until Will yells from his seat back up at Chris to ‘keep my wife’s name out your [expletive] mouth,’ and then repeats it, that I perceive the gravity of the situation, and that, no, it had not been a skit. Even so, I am unclear on the reason why Will is so upset. We had been living separate lives and were there as family, not as husband and wife. But when I hear Will yell ‘wife’ in the chaos of the moment, an internal shift of Oh [expletive] … I am his wife! happens instantly.”
In case you missed it above: They were separated at the time.
In a recent interview with People, Jada revealed that they had been separated for six years at the time of the 2022 Oscars. They continue to be separated.
“We’re still figuring it out,” Jada said in the interview. “We’ve been doing some really heavy-duty work together. We just got deep love for each other and we are going to figure out what that looks like for us.”
