In a new interview, the former 'Gotham' actress recalls that the 'Saturday Night Live' alum mistakenly thought that she had separated from the 'King Richard' actor due to their divorce rumors.
- Oct 12, 2023
AceShowbiz - Chris Rock might have quietly developed a crush on Jada Pinkett Smith despite poking fun at her shaved head at the 2022 Academy Awards. The actress has just revealed that the comedian once asked her out on a date before the Oscars incident, where Will Smith slapped Chris.
In an interview with PEOPLE ahead of the release of her memoir "Worthy", the former "Red Table Talk" host says that Chris mistakenly believed she and Will had separated due to their divorce rumors. "I think every summer all the reports would come out that me and Will were getting a divorce. And this particular summer, Chris, he thought that we were getting a divorce," she tells the outlet.
The mother of two recalls, "So he called me and basically he was like, 'I'd love to take you out.' And I was like, 'What do you mean?' He was like, 'Well, aren't you and Will getting a divorce?' I was like, 'No. Chris, those are just rumors.' He was appalled. And he profusely apologized and that was that."
In the interview, Jada also admits that she hasn't talked to Chris since the Oscars slap while sharing her thoughts on the roots of the misunderstanding between them. "[Do I have] any desire to talk to Chris? Here's my desire: I just hope that all the misunderstanding around this can be cleared up and that there can be peace," she says.
Jada says she wasn't offended by Chris' joke about her. "I mean, that's what comedians do," she remarks. "I would just have to say that I am not really here to make any judgment on how people decide to express themselves and express their art. I'll say that several times I've had my feelings hurt, for sure. I've had my feelings hurt a lot by Chris. But at the end of the day, too, being in the spotlight, it comes with the territory."
While she has no desire to talk to Chris, Jada says the "Saturday Night Live" alum did apologize to her after making the joke. "Chris came down to the end of the stage and tried to apologize to me. He said, 'I didn't mean you any harm.' I said, 'I can't talk about this now, Chris. This is some old s**t.' I thought this was [about] the Oscar 2016 and ... their stuff that they had before I even came into the picture in the late '80s. I've got to leave that to Will and Chris to talk about, but they got their stuff for sure," she recalls.
"I talk about this in the book, I think that there might be some misunderstanding between Chris and I as far as the 2016 Oscars," Jada further divulges. "I think that he might've taken offense, which I meant no harm in offending. That wasn't my intention. But I do think that there's a big misunderstanding there."
Back in 2016, when Will was overlooked for his "Concussion" performance, Chris hosted the Academy Awards amid the #OscarsSoWhite movement and made joke about Jada in his monologue. Chris revealed in his Netflix comedy special earlier this year that Jada told him he should quit the hosting gig out of solidarity.
To PEOPLE, Jada admits to "not really recognizing the level of pressure [Chris] might've been under" at the time. "But his feelings might've been hurt," she acknowledges. "Whatever misunderstanding might've been created, what could I have done to avoid that misunderstanding? The one thing that I think about is that call."
But after her remark, Jada says she and Chris have hashed things out between them. "He apologized and I apologized to him as well. So I actually thought that we were good, that the hatchet was buried between us. And we hadn't talked since then, until 2022 came," so the 52-year-old actress claims.
In other news, Jada also made headlines for revealing that she and Will have been separated since 2016. In a preview of an NBC News and "Today" show special, when host Hoda Kotb said, "It was not a divorce on paper, but it was a divorce," Jada agreed, adding that she and the Oscar winner "live separately."
Jada, who admitted that there were "a lot of things" that caused a fracture in her relationship with Will, explained that they were not ready to formally announce the split because they were "still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in partnership, right, and in regards to how do we present that to people."
Despite their split, Jada stressed that she and Will have no plans to divorce just yet. "I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce. We will work through whatever. And I just haven't been able to break that promise," she said.
