Rosalie “Rose” Rock, the mother of Chris Rock, called out Will Smith for slapping her son during the Oscars telecast during an interview with a local South Carolina news station.
In an interview with WIS-TV on Friday, Rose Rock said the slap didn’t only hurt her son.
“When he slapped Chris, he slapped all of us,” she said, telling the station “he really slapped me.”
Smith slapped Chris Rock after a joke made at the expense of Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith. The comedian made a comment alluding that Pinkett Smith would appear in a new “G.I. Jane” movie because of her closely buzzed haircut.
Pinkett Smith has alopecia, an autoimmune disorder that causes a person’s hair to fall out.
The joke triggered Smith to walk up to the stage and strike Chris Rock.
“You reacted to your wife giving you the side-eye and you went and made her day because she was mulled over laughing when it happened,” Rose Rock said of the moment.
She went on to say that her son had been so eager to present Questlove, who won an Oscar for the documentary “Summer of Soul,” and the moment was ruined by the slap.
“No one even heard his speech. No one was able to just be in the moment because everyone was sitting there like, ‘what just happened?’” she said.
After the Oscars, Rose Rock said she reached out to her son, although she could only do so from a distance since she was not in attendance. She told her son she was proud of how he handled the night.
Since then, Smith, who won an Oscar the same night for his performance in “King Richard,” resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and, later, the organization decided it would suspend him from attending the award ceremony for 10 years.
“The Board has decided, for a period of 10 years from April 8, 2022, Mr. Smith shall not be permitted to attend any Academy events or programs, in person or virtually, including but not limited to the Academy Awards,” the organization said in a statement at the time.
Rock lightly addressed the slap in his first comedy show days after the Oscars, saying he would eventually give a full statement about it.
“I’m still kind of processing what happened,” he told a sold-out crowd at The Wilbur on March 30.