Jada Pinkett Smith Says Chris Rock Asked Her Out Amid Will Smith ...

With Red Table Talk canceled, Jada Pinkett Smith is dropping bombs about her life elsewhere—namely in her upcoming memoir, a tell-all interview with People, and a sit-down with Hoda Kotb, where she confirmed that she and Will Smith have been separated since 2016. Pinkett Smith also shared key context for her husband slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. When divorce rumors circulated about her and Smith, Pinkett Smith said, the comedian 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,’” Pinkett Smith recalled to People. “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.” (A representative for Rock did not respond to People’s request for comment.)

Pinkett Smith said she hasn’t spoken to Rock since Smith slapped him at the Oscars after Rock made a joke about her shaved head. “[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 told the publication. “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.”

Drama among the trio had been publicly brewing since 2016, when Smith was snubbed by the Oscars for his performance in Concussion. That year, no actors of color were nominated in any of the acting categories, leading to the #OscarsSoWhite movement. Some artists boycotted the awards show in protest. Pinkett Smith was vocally supportive of the protest on social media, and asked Rock to step down from hosting that year’s ceremony, the comedian claimed in his Netflix comedy special earlier this year. Instead of quitting, Rock joked about Pinkett Smith during the Oscar broadcast. “Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties,” Rock said onstage. “I wasn’t invited.”

Seven years and a slap later, Pinkett Smith said she was “not really recognizing the level of pressure [Chris] might’ve been under” at the 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.”

Pinkett Smith said that after the 2016 Oscars joke, Rock “apologized and I apologized to him as well. 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.” Pinkett Smith claimed she also received an apology from Rock after the 2022 Oscars altercation.

As for her reaction to the joke, which inadvertently put a spotlight on Pinkett Smith’s alopecia: “I mean, that’s what comedians do,” she told People. “I would just have to say that I am not really here to make any judgment on how people decide to express themselves and express their art. I’ll say that several times I’ve had my feelings hurt, for sure. I’ve had my feelings hurt a lot by Chris. But at the end of the day, too, being in the spotlight, it comes with the territory.”