Chris Rock Will Only Talk About The Oscars Slap Under One Condition

On March 27, Chris Rock was slapped by Will Smith at the 94th annual Academy Awards ceremony after he made a joke about Smith’s wife and her hair loss condition, known as alopecia.

Although the “King Richard” actor will be allowed to keep his first-ever Best Actor Oscar, he resigned from the Academy earlier this month. On Friday, the Academy ruled that he will be banned from all Academy events – both in-person and virtual – for ten years due to the slapping incident.

Although Will Smith has made three official statements about the slap since it occurred, Chris Rock has remained silent. He revealed he will only talk about the Oscars slap on one condition.

According to the Palm Springs Desert Sun, Chris Rock said that he will only talk about the incident under one condition: he wants to get paid for it.

“I’m okay, I have a whole show, and I’m not talking about that until I get paid,” Rock told a live audience at his show in Indio, California on Friday. He added, “Life is good. I got my hearing back.”

During his March 28 apology on Instagram, Will Smith apologized to Chris Rock directly, saying, “Jokes at my expense are a part of the job, but a joke about Jada's medical condition was too much for me to bear, and I reacted emotionally. I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris.”

Following the Oscars slap, tickets for Rock’s 2022 “Ego Death World Tour” skyrocketed. Although he hasn’t made any official statements, he did speak about the incident at his first stand-up show in Boston at The Wilbur after the event.

“I'm still processing what happened,” Rock reportedly said. “So at some point I'll talk about that s---. It'll be serious. It'll be funny, but right now I'm going to tell some jokes.”

It remains to be seen when Rock will open up about the incident, but it’s clear that he definitely wants to get paid for it. In the meantime, several other members of Rock's family have been speaking publicly about the incident, including his brothers Troy and Kenny. Kenny recently spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the incident, saying that he felt “helpless” watching his brother being attacked.

During the interview, Kenny Rock said that one of the worst parts about the incident is that footage of the event keeps being replayed over and over again, which bothers him when “there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“It eats at me watching it over and over again because you’ve seen a loved one being attacked and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he explained. “My brother was no threat to him and you just had no respect for him at that moment. You just belittled him in front of millions of people that watch the show.”

He added that Chris was unaware of Jada Pinkett Smith's alopecia diagnosis and felt that Smith should be banned from all future Academy Award ceremonies. He also wished that the Academy had taken back Smith's Oscar.

When the outlet asked Kenny if he accepted Smith’s Instagram apology, Kenny replied, “I might have looked at it differently had he initially apologized when he got on the stage and cried and accepted the award, but he didn’t, so right there that tells me that it is something else.”

Kenny also felt that Will Smith should have been escorted out of the Oscars ceremony immediately after the slap occurred. “He should have been escorted out of there. I hold them accountable for that.”

He said that Smith “could have went up there and did anything you wanted to my brother. It could have been much worse than what he did.”

He added, “In my opinion, he embarrassed himself by doing that and his legacy by doing that.”

Kenny also repeated Tony Rock's previous statements, saying that Will Smith had yet to reach out to the Rock family privately to apologize. It is unclear if Smith has since apologized to the family after the Academy's Board of Directors determined his punishment on Friday afternoon.