Jada Pinkett Smith says she and Will Smith are moving forward together amid weeks of divorce rumors. The actress also addressed the infamous Oscar slap while calling for Will and Chris Rock reconcile.
Weeks after the shocking event, Jada Pinkett-Smith has finally broken her silence on the Oscars moment where her husband Will Smith smacked Chris Rock after he joked about her bald head. The joke was a sensitive moment for both Pinkett-Smith and her husband as she suffers from Alopecia which is why she is bald.
The moment was seen by thousands of people worldwide as they watched the illustrious show live. Will Smith had apologized to Chris Rock, but this is the first time Jada is addressing the incident on their Facebook family show called the Red Table Talk.
The show’s current episode focused on Alopecia. Pinkett-Smith even has a guest who details her very emotional story about her young daughter committing suicide after experiencing Alopecia as a pre-teen.
According to Jada, thousands of people reached out to her in sympathy after the incident.
“This is a really important ‘Red Table Talk‘ on Alopecia. Considering what I’ve been through with my own health and what happened at the Oscars, thousands have reached out to me with their stories,” she began.
“I’m using this moment to give our alopecia family an opportunity to talk about what it’s like to have this condition and to inform people about what alopecia actually is,” she added.
For the first time, she also directly addressed the slap Will Smith dealt Chris Rock after he told the unscripted joke that offended the Smiths.
“Now about Oscar night, my deepest hope is that these two intelligent, capable men have an opportunity to heal, talk this out and reconcile,” she said.
“The state of the world today, we need them both. And we all actually need one another more than ever. Until then, Will and I are continuing to do what we have done for the last 28 years, and that keeps figuring out this thing called life together,” she added.
Will has faced major backlash for his actions, including having his first Oscars for the biopic King Richard stripped away and being banned from the event for a decade, his movies being stalled or reportedly canceled. He has generally fallen out of favor with many people, especially in the black community, who viewed his actions towards another black man as humiliating and emasculating.
In the latest episode, Jada Pinkett-Smith, along with her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, and daughter, Willow Smith, delved into her anxiety caused by Alopecia. Pinkett-Smith has never been shy about her struggle with the hair loss phenomenon and would often update her fans about the reasons she has been tying up her hair or just deciding to big chop everything and keep a low buzz look. However, she spoke about having her hair highlighted before thousands of people across the world.
As the three discussed the night’s events, Pinkett-Smith hinted at the hurtful joke by Chris Rock as she pointed out feeling “shame” due to her losing her luscious locks over the past couple of years.
“One of the reasons I thought this show was really important is because I had so much outreach from people who suffer from alopecia, have children who suffer from alopecia, and they don’t talk about it because there’s so much shame around it,” she said.
“There’s so many people walking around who have Alopecia and that we don’t even know. I felt like it was so important to allow the alopecia community, our brothers and sisters, to tell their story. I think that people don’t understand what Alopecia is and they don’t understand the effects of it,” she added.
In the meantime, Chris Rock has not addressed the event in detail, only previously saying he would when the time was right. In recent weeks he has also joked about it as he spoke at Dave Chappelle’s stand-up session earlier this month and joked about a man who tried to attack Chappelle thinking he was Will Smith.
Rock also recently briefly touched on the topic during a stand-up set at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
“I’m okay, if anybody was wondering,” he said. “Got most of my hearing back…. Don’t expect me to talk about the bulls—. I’ll talk about it at some point… on Netflix,” he said.
