Chris Rock is slapping back.
“I’ve rooted for Will Smith my whole life,” he recently told a packed theater. But now, Rock added, he hates watching Smith’s latest movie, in which he plays a tortured, escaped slave.
“The other day, I watched ‘Emancipation’ just so I could watch him getting whipped.”
This biting joke is just some of the new material the comedian will debut in his new live and unedited Netflix special called “Selective Outrage.” When it airs Saturday at 10 pm ET., Rock will reportedly speak out about the night Smith smacked him onstage at the Oscars.
A source told Page Six that “the comedian is waiting to spill his humorous take on it” in his major stand-up show.
He’s already been testing the waters. The 58-year-old comic has been trying out vicious new material about the infamous incident onstage for audiences during his “Ego Death” tour in the days leading up to the broadcast. And, according to the Baltimore Sun, Rock pulls no punches.
“Will Smith practices selective outrage,” Rock told a 2,300-strong crowd Friday, Feb. 17, at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre, the newspaper reported. “People who are in the know, know that s–t had nothing to do with me.”
Rock threw more stones. “He’s significantly bigger than me,” Rock said. “You will never see me on camera with my shirt off. Will played Muhammad Ali. I played Pookie [in 1991’s ‘New Jack City’],
According to a Deadline report, Rock previously joked at London’s O2 Arena with Dave Chappelle, “He played Ali! I can’t even play Floyd Mayweather.”
And, just as he did in the UK, he again referred to the “Bad Boys for Life” actor as “Suge Smith,” invoking the first name of the founder of Death Row Records, Marion “Suge” Knight Jr., who is Currently serving a 28-year prison sentence for voluntary manslaughter after a fatal 2015 hit-and-run.
“Who gets smacked by Suge Smith?” To install Rock asked.
The juicy special will air just short of a year after Smith, 54, sensationally stormed the stage of the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles on March 27, 2022, and assaulted Rock in full view of the audience and TV cameras because the “Down to Earth The star made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
“Jada, I love you,” Rock cracked while presenting the award for documentary feature. “‘GI Jane II’ — can’t wait to see it.”
Rock was referencing Pinkett Smith’s shaved head, which was a result of her suffering from the hair-loss condition alopecia.
Enraged, Smith shouted at Rock from his seat, “Keep my wife’s name out of your f–king mouth” twice, stomped up to the stage and smacked Rock so hard the impact was audible.
According to the Sun, Rock kept his word Friday night about Pinkett Smith’s name and only referred to her as “Will Smith’s wife” and “his wife.”
Nevertheless, he mocked Pinkett Smith, 51, for cheating on her husband of more than 25 years in 2016 with rapper August Alsina, a friend of her son Jaden, when Alsina was 23 and she was 44. That revelation led Smith to announce that he and his wife were in an open marriage.
“We’ve all been cheated on,” Rock said to the crowd. “She hurt him way more than he ever hurt me.
“Everyone knows,” he said. “I’m not spilling any tea.”
Rock piled on some more. “I felt so bad for Will, I tried to call and give him my condolences,” he said. “Everybody was calling him ab—h except me. But who does he hit? Me.”
Minutes after the slap, Smith won the Oscar for Best Actor for playing Serena and Venus Williams’ dad Richard Williams in “King Richard.” He accepted his award in tears and said, “Denzel [Washington] said to me a few minutes ago, ‘At your highest moment, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you.’ ,
That April, the “Independence Day” actor was banned from the Oscars and all Academy Awards events for 10 years, but was allowed to keep his award.
During a June episode of “Red Table Talk,” Pinkett Smith encouraged the two men to “have an opportunity to heal, talk this out and reconcile.”
Smith then apologized to Rock in July on a publicly posted video.
“There is no part of me that thinks that was the right way to behave at that moment,” he said. “There’s no part of me that thinks that’s the optimal way to handle a feeling of disrespect or insults.”
Smith added: “I’ve reached out to Chris and the message that came back is he’s not ready to talk, and when he is, he will reach out.”
Two months later at the O2 Arena, Rock gave a short review of Smith’s emotional mea culpa. “F–k your hostage video,” he said.