Stephen A. Smith stands firm on his Will Smith stance.
The sports analyst says Will Smith owes the Black community an “explanation” after the infamous Chris Rock slap.
If you can recall, Chris Rock made a joke about Jada Pinkett-Smith at the 2022 Oscars. He said to the actress, “Jada, G.I. Jane 2 can’t wait to see it,” presumably referring to the actress’ newly shaved head due to her alopecia. It was immediately clear that Will nor his wife Jada did not think that joke was funny. The actor then walked on stage and slapped Chris Rock across the face, “keep my wife’s name out of your f**king mouth.”
Smith has since apologized to Rock, however, according to Stephen A. Smith that’s simply not enough. During a recent episode of The Stephen A. Smith Show he expresses, “I’m not nearly as interested in seeing Will Smith in the movies than I am of seeing him doing an actual sit-down interview with somebody to explain why he did what he did,” he said.
“I don’t care if it’s with [blogs]. I don’t care if it’s with Oprah. Because you know it ain’t gonna be me, right? He ain’t gonna sit down with me because some questions are gonna get asked; but I don’t care who it’s with. You gotta provide an explanation as to why that happened. It can’t be that you went to therapy and you learned the error of your ways, or you’ve addressed some of the demons that were plaguing you mentally and emotionally and spiritually. That’s not good enough! And even though we weren’t the ones that were slapped literally, ladies and gentlemen, figuratively, the Black community was slapped.”
He continued: “We know you wouldn’t have smacked Ricky Gervais,” he continued, “Bill Maher, Bill Burr, or a host of others. We know you wouldn’t have done that. No apology necessary. I’m just saying a lot of folks ain’t get over that. A lot of folks find it hard to just go to the movies to watch you. I’m one of those people, and I never missed a Will Smith movie.”
Despite Stephen A.’s take, Will’s new movie, “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” earned $104.6 million globally in its opening weekend.