Chris Rock’s mother, Rose Rock, conveyed that her soul still aches regarding the slap that reverberated around the world on March 27, 2022.
Rose Rock gave an exclusive interview with South Carolina news station WIS-TV revealing her feelings for superstar actor Will Smith. The Men in Black and Independence Day star walked onstage at the Oscars and lowered the hammer across her son’s face with force for joking about Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head. In the year or so before the Smith smackdown, Pinkett Smith had been open about her struggles with the auto-immune disease alopecia that causes substantial hair loss.
The infamous slap pierced Rose Rock’s heart.
“You reacted to your wife giving you the side-eye, and you went and made her day because she was mulled over laughing when it happened,” Rose Rock told the television station. Her son has reportedly revealed that he will speak on the slap for the first time during a sold-out comedy show in Baltimore.
Rose Rock, like millions who were watching the 2022 Oscars that night, initially believed that the slap was part of some comedy bit that Rock was a part of. She then realized that the slap was real when Smith returned to his seat and twice roared to Rock, “Keep my wife’s name out of your f–king mouth!”
That is when Rose Rock told the news station that it was as if Smith assaulted her personally – even though she was thousands of miles away from the Academy Awards in Los Angeles.
“When he slapped Chris, he slapped all of us. He really slapped me,” the mother said. “Because when you hurt my child, you hurt me.”
“No one heard his speech. No one was able to just be in the moment because everyone was sitting there like, ‘What just happened?’ ” Rose Rock continued, adding that her son was “happy” to present an Oscar to music legend Questlove during the Academy Awards.
The slap was talked about and dissected ad nauseam for the next two weeks following the infamous episode. Smith has since resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science whose governing body has since banished Smith from the awards ceremony for the next 10 years.
Listen to Rose Rock’s interview below.
