It’s been almost two months since Will Smith stunned audiences — both in person and at home — when he slapped Chris Rock during the 2022 Academy Awards, but now Rock is joking about the experience. During a standup set at London’s Royal Albert Hall earlier this week, Rock made a brief joke about the incident before quickly informing audiences that he doesn’t plan to speak about the situation until he gets a Netflix special. During his set, Rock joked that he “got most of my hearing back” in the time since the incident.
“I’m okay, if anybody was wondering,” Rock said (via PEOPLE). “Got most of my hearing back.”
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“Don’t expect me to talk about the bullsh-t,” he went on to say. “I’ll talk about it at some point … on Netflix. Your tickets were expensive, but not that expensive.”
During the 94th Academy Wards in March, Chris Rock took the stage as a presenter for Best Documentary Feature. As part of his lead up to the reveal, Rock made some jokes, including one about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hairstyle, which was a result of her public battle with alopecia. The joke didn’t exactly go over well with Will Smith, who got out of his seat and slapped Rock before returning to his seat.
In the days that followed, Smith resigned from the Academy and in April, the Academy’s Board of Governors announced that Smith has been banned from all Academy events, including the Oscars, for a ten-year period. The ban does not prevent Smith from being nominated for or from winning an Academy Award during that time but would prevent him from being present to accept.
“I betrayed the trust of the Academy,” Smith wrote in his resignation letter. “I deprived other nominees and winners of their opportunity to celebrate and be celebrated for their extraordinary work. I am heartbroken. I want to put the focus back on those who deserve attention for their achievements and allow the Academy to get back to the incredible work it does to support creativity and artistry in film. So, I am resigning from membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and will accept any further consequences the Board deems appropriate. Change takes time and I am committed to doing the work to ensure that I never again allow violence to overtake reason.”
