At this year's Oscar gala, held on March 28 in Los Angeles, actor Will Smith slapped the host of the gala, comedian Chris Rock, for making a joke about his wife's alopecia, the also actress Jada Pinkett Smith.
The slap went down in history instantly and resonated across the planet.
On Friday, Will Smith showed his regret in a video posted on social media.
“Chris, I apologize.
My behavior was unacceptable and I'm here whenever you want to talk," the actor said on the recording.
Now it is Rock who responds to that video, but not from the global stage of the network, but from a physical one, in Atlanta, to be exact.
Hours after Smith's apology, Rock appeared at the Fox Theater to give one of his monologues, in which he included some hints directed at the repentant actor.
“Everyone is trying to be a fucking victim.
If everyone claims to be a victim, then no one will listen to the real victims," said the comedian.
To continue, he invoked the figure of Marion
Suge
Knight, head of the record label Death Row Records, producer of some of the biggest hip hop stars, such as Dr. Dre or Snoop Dogg, and who served prison in the nineties convicted of rape and in the 2000s for skipping parole by punching a valet.
I mean, a guy who doesn't have too much of a good reputation.
Thus, Rock referred to Will Smith as
Suge
Smith.
"Even when
Suge
Smith smacked me, I went to work the next day, I have kids."
The comedian had already spoken publicly about the assault, for example, at a performance at London's Albert Hall, although he had promised to do so only "on Netflix and when I see a big check with his name on it."
On that occasion he said: "If anyone asks, I have already regained my hearing," referring to the slap in the face of his ear.
And he added: "Those who say that words can hurt have never been hit in the face."
In another
show,
this time with the comedian Dave Chapelle (who, by the way, was assaulted in a show), the lurid topic had also been touched: "At least someone famous hit you," Chapelle joked.
To which Rock replied, "Well, yeah, I got hit by the softest rapper that ever lived."
04:31
The complete sequence of Will Smith's slap in the face of Chris Rock
“No part of me thinks now that that was the right way to behave at the time.
No part of me thinks that was the right way to handle a feeling of disrespect or insult,” Smith claimed in the video of him.
The actor also claimed to have thought a lot about his actions in recent months, to have apologized to Rock's mother and little brother and even tried to contact him to fix things, but the comedian seemed not ready to consider that public aggression as old water.
"I promise that we can be friends again," said the protagonist of
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
.
Video hasn't made things any better.