Chris Rock’s brother, Tony Rock, thinks the infamous Oscar Slap was brought on by Will Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, always mentioning Tupac Shakur.
Four months after Will Smith shockingly slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards back in March, the incident is still a topic of discussion. Recently, Rock’s brother, Tony Rock, appeared on the Top Billin’ with Bill Bellamy podcast, which premiered on YouTube on Thursday (July 14), and shared his thoughts on the slap heard around the world.
When Bellamy asked Tony if he felt Will Smith was embarrassed by Chris’ joke about his wife, Jada, having Alopecia, he answered, “No.”
“He wasn’t embarrassed, everybody saw the footage, he laughed first,” the veteran comedian stated at the 10:24 mark in the video below. “So that’s not embarrassment, he was laughing.”
“In the time they cut to my brother and cut back, he [Will] was already up walking [to the stage]," he continued. "So maybe it was the Jada look.”
Tony also suggested that Will may have slapped his brother because the actor was always bothered by being labeled as “soft” and that his wife, Jada, keeps talking about her past friendship with Tupac.
“I think that [Oscar Slap] was the accumulation of him being slapped on other levels,” he explained. “He said it himself, he always hated the 'soft moniker.' He’s soft, Jada won’t let Tupac die, it's always something about Tupac and his daughter [Willow Smith] brought up Tupac. And I’m not bringing up family stuff that people don’t know… this is stuff that everybody knows."
"[Jada] commonly talks about Tupac, her [past] relationship with Tupac," he added. "As a married man to this woman, you're like, 'Damn is what I’m doing not enough?'"
Tony also acknowledged that Will might have been mad at Chris’ previous jokes about him and his wife, which may have prompted the Hollywood superstar to assault his brother. But the stand-up comic felt that Will should have talked with Chris backstage about his offending joke.
Tony Rock’s comments aside, the Oscar Slap will forever be a sad moment in the history of the Academy Awards telecast.