Leslie Jones claims Chris Rock underwent therapy as a result of Will Smith’s strike at the 2022 Oscars. She addressed People, “That shit 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.”
Jones, who was at home that evening and was watching the program, said she was “infuriated” to see the incident unfold live on television. “You don’t know that I was going to jump in my car and roll up there,” she said. “I was so fucking mad on so many levels.”
She continued by saying that Smith, who won the Oscar for best actor for his performance in King Richard only seconds later, ought to have made an effort to establish atonement with Rock when he received his award. In his acceptance speech, Smith expressed regret to the Academy and his fellow candidates, but he refrained from apologizing to Rock specifically. Before presenting the trophy for the best documentary feature at the March 2022 Oscars event, Rock made a harmless jest about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Rock allegedly made a reference to the actress’s shaved-off head when he said Pinkett Smith was getting ready to shoot a G.I. Jane continuation.
Smith came onto the stage and hit Rock. Rock, he roared as he took his seat again, “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!” He issued a direct apology to Rock in an Instagram post the next day. In July 2022, he sent a second video message of remorse.“There is no part of me that thinks that was the right way to behave in that moment,” he declared. Following the incident, Smith made the announcement that he was leaving the Academy and was given a 10-year appearance suspension. He will keep the Oscar he won at the 2022 presentation, albeit he is still eligible for nominations and victories in the future.
Jones stated that she thought Smith’s acceptance of his Oscar that evening may have “fixed” the predicament. She says he could have stated something like, “I shouldn’t have did that. Bring Chris out. I can not accept the Oscar right now because that was fucking wrong.”
Smith was criticized by Rock in his live Netflix special Chris Rock: Selective Outrage! earlier this year. Rock conveyed to the audience, “Will Smith practices selective outrage because everybody knows what the fuck happened. Everybody that really knows, knows that I have nothing to do with that shit. I didn’t have any entanglements.” He added, “His wife was fucking her son’s friend. OK, now, I normally would not talk about this shit, but for some reason, these n—-s put that shit on the internet. I have no idea why two talented people would do something that lowdown. What the fuck? And we’ve all been cheated on. Everybody in here has been cheated on. None of us have ever been interviewed by the person that cheated on us on television.”