Chris Rock’s mom speaks about The Slap for the first time while on a visit to Columbia
Chris Rock’s mother recently spoke for the first time about actor Will Smith slapping her son at the Oscar’s last month.
During a visit to Columbia, Rose Rock, a motivational speaker, author and youth family advocate, told local news station WIS-TV that her son, who was born in South Carolina, was “still processing” the incident in which Smith slapped Chris Rock on live television after he made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith.
“When Will slapped Chris, he slapped all of us,” Rose Rock said. “But he really slapped me. When you hurt my child, you hurt me.”
Rose Rock said she did not attend the Oscars this year and was watching the ceremony at home when her son was slapped. She told WIS-TV that she first thought the slap was staged, until “he (Smith) started using obscenities.”
“Because you did a slap, but so many things could have happened,” she said about Smith. “Chris could have stepped back and fallen. You really could have gotten taken out in handcuffs. You didn’t think. You reacted to your wife giving you the side-eye, and you went up, and you made her day because she was bowled over laughing when it happened.”
Rose Rock also said that Smith’s 10-year Oscars ban wasn’t much of a punishment.
“I wouldn’t take his award away and I don’t see any good way they could have taken him out without disrupting,” she said. However, she added that Smith owed her son a better apology.
“I feel really bad that he never apologized,” she said said. “I mean his people wrote up a piece saying I apologize to Chris Rock, but you see something like that is personal, you reach out.”
This story was originally published April 25, 2022 at 12:04 PM.
