Will Smith has returned to the public spotlight and is promoting a new movie, “Emancipation,” which has already made headway months after his violent incident at the Oscars. Chris Rock made a joke about Will Smith’s wife Jada’s baldness during the Oscars 2022. And in return, Smith ended up slapping Chris Rock on stage for a harmless joke.
According to his wife, Jada, the actor has spent a significant amount of time in “spiritual retirement” and meditating on his life and deeds as part of a “healing” process.
Smith has made an appearance on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, his first show of the year, after being barred from the upcoming Oscars and having a movie to promote.
“It was a horrible night , as you can imagine. There’s a lot of nuances and complexities to it. But at the end of the day, I just gone, you know.”
“I was going through something that night, you know? Not that that justified my behavior at all… It was a lot of things. I was the little boy watching his father hit his mother, you know? It all came out in that moment. It’s not who I want to be,” he explains.
Regarding what happened after the ceremony, Will Smith confesses:
“I was out. I had rage that had been bottled up for a long time. My nephew is 9 years old. He is the sweetest boy. We came home, he had stayed up late to see his Uncle Will and we are sitting in my kitchen and he’s sitting on my lap and holding the Oscar and all of a sudden he’s like, ‘Why did you hit that man , Uncle Will?’ Damn, why are you trying to make me Oprah?”.
Smith clarifies that there is nothing to “justify” his behavior at all. “You ask me what I’ve learned. We just have to be nice to each other, man,” he admits.
“You know, it’s like, it’s hard. And I guess what was most painful for me, is that I took what was hard for me and made it hard for other people. You know, it’s like, I got the idea that damaged people do damage”.
