In March, Chris Rock got on stage at the Oscars, went off script and cracked a “GI Jane joke” about Jada Pinkett Smith, a woman who has been open about her alopecia. Jada’s husband Will Smith, who was a sure thing to win the Best Actor Oscar that night, walked on stage and slapped Rock. Will went back to his seat and then yelled up at Rock, “Keep my wife’s name out of your f–king mouth.” In the days, weeks and months to follow, Will has repeatedly apologized to Rock and the Academy, he’s been banned from the Oscars and he lost his Academy membership. White folks rallied to Rock’s defense and made the slap sound like the most traumatizing event they’d ever witnessed in their lives. It was asinine, frankly. Unfortunately, this entire mess has convinced Chris Rock that he has a pass to compare himself to Nicole Brown Simpson, the victim of domestic violence who was murdered by OJ Simpson.
Five months after Will Smith slapped him onstage at the Academy Awards, stunning millions watching around the world, Chris Rock delivered another sort of slap back at the Oscars.
Riffing with the crowd at a stand-up show in Phoenix Sunday night, the comedian said that he was asked to host next year’s Oscars, according to the Arizona Republic. But he turned the offer down, joking that returning to Hollywood’s biggest night would be like returning to a crime scene.
Referencing the murder trial of O.J. Simpson, Rock told the crowd at Arizona Financial Theatre that going back to the awards ceremony would be like asking Nicole Brown Simpson “to go back to the restaurant” where she left her eyeglasses before being killed.
Rock also said he turned down a post-slap Super Bowl commercial offer.
First of all, Chris Rock needs some updated cultural references. This whole mess started with a GI Jane joke and ends with a riff comparing himself to Nicole Brown Simpson. Yes, the 1990s were amazing, but dude, a lot of stuff has happened since then. As for the comparison… Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered. Chris Rock was slapped. He’s making light of domestic violence and comparing (in a way) Will Smith to OJ Simpson, and this is after comparing Will to Suge Knight (who has also allegedly killed people). What a complete mess.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
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- New York City, NY – Chris Rock and Lake Bell are all smiles while shopping around Manhattan’s Soho area. Chris was all smiles on a very hot day in the city with his new girlfriend following his performance at MSG with Dave Chappelle and Kevin Hart. Pictured: Chris Rock and Lake Bell BACKGRID USA 25 JULY 2022 BYLINE MUST READ: BrosNYC / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York, NY – Chris Rock and Lake Bell get lunch at the Lure restaurant in SoHo. Pictured: Chris Rock, Lake Bell BACKGRID USA 24 JULY 2022 BYLINE MUST READ: JosiahW / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York, NY – Chris Rock and Lake Bell get lunch at the Lure restaurant in SoHo. Pictured: Chris Rock, Lake Bell BACKGRID USA 24 JULY 2022 BYLINE MUST READ: JosiahW / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
If the best the Oscars can do is invite back someone to make more tasteless jokes at other peoples’ expense, they need to give up entirely. I don’t believe that he turned down a super bowl commercial either.
Everything to do with Rock is his punching down on and exploiting women, dead or alive.
He enjoyed the idea of humiliating Jada – where he felt she could not reply. He enjoys that power. He deliberately leans into making jokes about domestic abuse that ended in murder. Where he knows Nicole Brown (Simpson) cannot reply. Another silenced woman he could exploit for his needs.
I despise violence but sometimes what the worst type of bully needs is to come against a someone who says no more. Society sees Rock as a victim – for him to align himself to a murdered woman. He’s lower than the lowest.
All I know is he needs to get off the cross already. Geez.
Okay, Kaiser is so right about Rock and his dated cultural references. That sh*t made me chuckle. Anyway, this is who Chris Rock is. He’s a hateful, miserable cuss who needs his ass beat. Figuratively that is. He needs to come face to face with black women who will tell him the truth about his miserable ass. I heard that he’s been talking shit about Duchess Meghan in his shows. So he’s really digging into that MAGA/hate black women crowd.
I agree with everything you wrote @girl_ninja. And Chris needs to keep Meghan’s name out of his damn mouth.
Just like Chappelle. No one else finds them funny anymore.
Ugh that’s so disappointing to hear about his penchant for dissing black women but not entirely surprising.
He also lets his white comedian friends call him the N word freely so there’s that.
I have always maintained that CR has an end goal with this narrative and here it is i.e. to destroy Jada and anyone close to her. These are the rantings of a man scorned over 25+ years ago.
Really shocking and inappropriate.
Where are all the white people who were traumatized by the slap? This is worse than anything that Will Smith did. But one day Chris will find out how white people truly feel about him.
Those people are partly why he can say this nonsense. They made a slap seem like the most horrible thing that had ever happened in their presence. Remember the “What if it had been Betty White who made the joke and Will slapped her and she fell and *died*” hot takes? Those “traumatized” people were already equating the slap to death, so of course Rock would continue along those lines.
Lots of people were upset by the slap. I saw people of all people upset by the slap. I wasn’t one of them, however, and am a Will fan.
not at his show? Can Will defenders maybe stop acting like there’s no difference between a minor show on a tour and Oscar’s?
It’s not just white people. Wanda Sykes has been whining about her trauma too. Harry Lennix decided Will needed to give his Oscar back because he made black people look bad. Or something. Then there’s Chris’s mother and brothers…
Chris should’ve just kept his mouth shut but I knew it wouldn’t last.
I don’t know who this Harry Lennix is but if anyone can still whine about such-and-such “making Black people look bad” in the year of our Lord, Beyonce, after we’ve all lived through the Very White Donald Trump for 4 years, then they need their head examined. And I’ll fight any man in this bar who says different.
@Amy Bee: You are so right.
It was only a matter of time before Chris revealed his true self, & that’s who Will was reacting to.
Slapping him, no.
But Chris is & has been, & will continue to be, an ass. He’s not a great person.
People, media, really need to stop this “hero worship” thing they do, elevating any person that’s in fashion in that moment.
Chris got slapped, he got an apology (and then some).
He never apologized to Jada but that’s overlooked.
ETA: revealed his true self to those who don’t know his history & think he’s a victim
You can really see his bitterness at having to deal with any fallout from targeting Jada.
Miss me with Chris Rock and his foolish nonsense. I don’t know how anyone finds him funny. He punches down and unfortunately black women are his favorite target. Chris is using the “slap” to his advantage and it’s disgraceful to compare it domestic violence. He will always be an a-hole.
Amen. He really is pathetic.
He isn’t just pathetic, he is vile in every sense of the word. CR needs to lose his career and be brought down. Why is anyone watching his performances?
And just like that, this post is going to have a new topic!
If people are targeting you with relentless violence, and refuse to stop, and others also refuse to make them stop, it is perfectly reasonable to respond with violence. Chris Rock will hopefully eventually get what he deserves after a lifetime of punching down. He’s a repulsive soul who hates Black women, hates Black women that love themselves, and hates other individuals that value Black women.
This is what people were talking about when we said he is neither funny nor a nice person. He is a lazy comedian with his 90s “jokes” and oh look, there’s that misogyny everyone was talking about. Making a murder victim, a female victim of DV your reference? Nice, Chris. Really. How is he still successful?
Exactly!
He wasn’t funny or nice on that Oscars stage and it’s been a loooong time since he’s been funny at all. His humor is basic and demeaning and way past having any sort of cultural impact or relevance.
What is Lake Bell doing with him?
$$$.
Interested to see if all the WW who clutched their pearls about Will will think of this. Will they be just as traumatized now that what Black women have BEEN saying about Rock involves a White DV victim?
Ok just stop. Meghan did not compare herself to Mandela. Your bias is showing, cover that ish back up.
Tick tock Chris Rock. It’s getting old now, time for new material.
I cannot stand this bloke. Apart from being a gobby prick, Chris Rock isn’t even funny.
And this is why I had no problem with that slap. In fact, Will should have slapped him harder. This man has always been a misogynist incel jackass. He targeted Jada in his “jokes” for years because apparently, she turned him down 30 years ago and he’s been pissed about it since. And he took the chance to humiliate her in front of her peers and millions of viewers. Now he’s dragged out his tired ass Nicole Brown Simpson joke. A woman who’s head was almost decapitated because her ex-husband refused to leave her alone and move the fuck on after their divorce. And she’s been a go-to joke for Chris for years and years as well. Again, Will should have slapped him harder.
@ Nyro, it seems that CR has no issue abusing women for his own gain. But to bring Nicole Brown into his ongoing act of being the actual victim is a new low that even snails can’t achieve.
Thanks for the insight as to why CR always targeted JPS. I never knew she had turned him down. I see that CR has always held a deep resentment of her, and all other black women.
It’s not lost on me that he compared himself to a white women.
Excellent insight.
Strangely quiet from the I support Chris Rock club.
Ain’t it tho?
Crickets from the folks who were “traumatized” by the slap.
Not a peep from pearl clutching community.
That slap he received was well deserved. The man hates woman but specifically black women.
To be fair, they’re probably banned
I truly feel sorry for NIcole and Ron’s families. They have to relive that nightmare over and over again whenever their loved ones are mentioned in the media. Also, seeing OJ free and living his best life must make their blood boil.
@ ME, I know. OJ is living free and has not made any attempt to pay the lawsuit won by Ron’s family, always declaring he is “bankrupt”. OJ has hidden all of his assets that he irretrievably broke by murdering Nicole and Ron. OJ knew his god-like persona would free him for murdering 2 innocent people. OJ was never held responsible for abusing Nicole which gave him power to kill Nicole and poor Ron.
I know it may not be much comfort since OJ never served time for murdering his ex-wife and but he did end up serving time in jail for that really bizarre Las Vegas robbery and was in there for 9 years. Karma came back to bite him in his behind and while it will never be enough, I know a lot of us felt vindicated when he got sent to the slammer. He thought he could get away with it a second time but he did not. If he steps out of line again, I think he’ll get sent away for life but at the age of 75 I don’t think he can really do much anymore.
Isn’t that….kinda inaccurate? She wasn’t murdered at the restaurant.
Yeah the reference doesn’t actually make sense. She left her sunglasses at the restaurant. Ron was the one who brought them by the house and was murdered in the process, as was Nicole. If Nicole had gone back to the restaurant to get her glasses, then perhaps Ron wouldn’t have been murdered. I don’t understand how this relates to Chris Rock at all.
I was trying to figure it out, too. It was unfunny, and made zero sense. Had she gone back to the restaurant, maybe she would have lived another day? And maybe Ron would have too?
God, how I hate Chris Rock. In one comedy special, Rock repeatedly said he “understood” why Simpson killed Brown. I was done with Rock at that time. Now he’s a butchered murder victim just like her? Fuck you, Chris.
+1 FU Mr. Rock
But why is he doing this? It’s because he’s ALWAYS done it. Maga people LOVE races turning on their own. It’s despicable. The second they see it, they pounce.
I’m sure in his mind it equates. Why would he return to the place where he was attacked? Like…if Nicole hadn’t gone to that restaurant, she wouldn’t have been killed. The correlation is bs. Doesn’t compute.
All of these responses are spot on but I’m surprised none of you asked the most important question.
WHAT DOES AMY SHUMER THINK ABOUT THIS? /s
Better yet Alec Baldwin you know the one who shot and killed a woman but still had time to talk sh*t about Will
You got me there!😂😂
His wife finally dumped him and then Megalyn Echikunwoke, who he had a long term relationship with dumped him.
He always dated above his weight class and really thought he was the prize instead. Two Black women finally leaving him, along with his ‘jokes’ about them, yeah, it doesn’t surprise me he is the way he is now. What I’m saying is him being with Lake Bell out in public is part of that next step.
He’s no prize. So glad Megalyn realized that.
This guy needs to go away. He wasn’t funny in the 90s, he isn’t funny now. As unfeminist as it may seem, I hope that if someone was to insult me in front of 20 million people the way he did to Jada that my hubby would get up and slap them as well. Will slapping him was the best part of the evening and all I said when it happened was “About time.” CR is a tw*t and needs to pack it in. All the white people blabbing on that they were traumatized and triggered need to GTFO. Will should have knocked CR’s sad, sorry ass out cold instead of just a b*tch slap. This comment just proves that this guy is a low class, useless neanderthal. All the pearl clutchers should be traumatized by this. Comparing yourself to a murder and domestic violence victim who received NO justice proves how disgusting he is.
Sorry…Rant over.
**Edited to add that I am a mixed race woman who has experienced domestic violence in the past.**
Chris Rock got slapped once and literally hasn’t stopped crying about it and has the gall to compare himself to a woman who was stalked, hunted, and slaughtered with a butcher knife by her psychotic ex husband? There has to be something wrong with him mentally. Like a number of people here I’ve also experienced a domestic violence history, been slapped, been lifted off my feet and thrown down stairs, and many more, and I would still NEVER compare myself to a woman who was nearly decapitated with a butcher knife.
I’m confused. This is y’all’s fave king when he’s attacking black women and giving his white comedy buddies the ok to call black peoples the n word. What changed?
I feel like the only person on the internet who still believes you can’t beat someone up because you don’t like what they’re saying. It was the Oscars for christ’s sake…he could have easily achieved his point just by yelling at Chris to stop. The violence was over the top and insane. Are we really going to start relying on the same rationale that school shooters use to justify their violent impulses?? The old “I was bullied, they were mean to me” blah blah blah. Who cares? I’m a fat old woman…nobody gets less respect than me yet here I am not slapping, punching, shooting, or hurting anyone. Men will do literally anything besides take accountability for their emotions and go to therapy.