Jada Pinkett-Smith is telling it all.
In her new book, Worthy, she speaks about the time Chris Rock asked her on a date amid divorce rumors between her and Will Smith.
During a recent interview with People, the actress was asked if she had spoken to or had any desire to speak to the comedian after her husband, Will Smith slapped the comedian at the 2022 Oscars.
“No, I haven’t talked to Chris. Do I have any desire to talk to Chris? Here’s my desire: I just hope that all the misunderstanding around this can be cleared up and that there can be peace,” she said.
The actress continued, “I talk about this in the book, I think that there might be some misunderstanding between Chris and I as far as the 2016 Oscars. I think that he might’ve taken offense, which I meant no harm in offending. That wasn’t my intention. But I do think that there’s a big misunderstanding there.”
In 2016, there were no actors of color nominated and Pinkett-Smith was very vocal of her support for the #OscarsSoWhite movement. Rock hosted that show and said that Jada told him that he should quit the hosting gig in support of the movement.
Jada went on to say that she should’ve checked on him due to the amount of pressure he may have been under during that time. “I probably should have called him and gone, ‘Hey, are you okay? And just know that although I’m speaking out about the Oscars, I do wish you the best and I just want you to know that,’ me taking the time to have called him and said that, just to touch base. But his feelings might’ve been hurt,” she said.
She added, “All we can ever do is just look at our part and see where could I have done something that would’ve seemed as if… Whatever misunderstanding might’ve been created, what could I have done to avoid that misunderstanding? The one thing that I think about is that call.”
She revealed that Rock called her where she thought that they moved on from the situation. “He apologized and I apologized to him as well,” she said. “So I actually thought that we were good, that the hatchet was buried between us. And we hadn’t talked since then, until 2022 came.”
Jada admitted that Chris went to speak to her after being slapped by Will and tried to apologize to her. “Chris came down to the end of the stage and tried to apologize to me. He said, ‘I didn’t mean you any harm.’ I said, ‘I can’t talk about this now, Chris. This is some old s—.’ I thought this was [about] the Oscar 2016 and … their stuff that they had before I even came into the picture in the late ‘80s. I’ve got to leave that to Will and Chris to talk about, but they got their stuff for sure.”
She then talked about how Chris Rock asked her out on a date. “I think every summer all the reports would come out that me and Will were getting a divorce. And this particular summer, Chris, he thought that we were getting a divorce. So he called me and basically he was like, ‘I’d love to take you out.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ He was like, ‘Well, aren’t you and Will getting a divorce?’ I was like, ‘No. Chris, those are just rumors.’ He was appalled. And he profusely apologized and that was that.”
Chris Rock has yet to respond to these claims.