Chris Rock waited almost a year after being slapped across the face by Will Smith to give it back to the actor in his new stand-up comedy special on Saturday night. The comedian finally broke loose in front of a sizable at-home audience during his hilarious live Netflix show, "Selective Outrage," about the notorious 2022 Oscars where Smith smacked him onstage.
Rock will brilliant on Saturday night and in fact beat Smith harder than the actor had hit the alien in his popular 1996 action film Independence Day — and to, well, Rock himself at the Academy Awards. And Rock Didn't stop at unleashing his outrage at Smith but also took a crude dig at Meghan Markle.
Rock Gives It Back
Rock, 58, claimed that Smith, 54, had displayed "selective outrage" by lashing out because his wife had an affair and that anyone who was truly aware of the circumstances surrounding the slap realized that it wasn't actually about him.
Even more, he mentioned how Jada Pinkett Smith only admitted to having an affair when speaking with her husband, adding, "His wife was f****** her son's friend."
"Everybody called that man a b—h," Rock who was in top gear, said about the media's reaction to Smith's well-reported marital problems in the lead-up to the Oscars. "And who'd he hit? Me! A [N-word] he knows he could beat. That is some b—h-ass s–t."
Rock also joked about the physical pain as he continued, "It still hurts! I got 'Summertime' ringin' in my ear!"
The special comes only one week before this year's Oscars.
As Rock took the stage Saturday night, audience members were anticipating him to openly discuss getting slapped across the face. He finally brought it up to end the show after around two and a half hours.
"You all know what happened to me, getting slapped by Suge Smith. Everybody knows, everybody f****** knows," he began.
"I got smacked at the f****** Oscars by this motherf*****. And people are like 'Did it hurt?' It still hurts. I got Summertime ringing in my ear f***** drums.
"But I'm not a victim, you will never see me on Oprah or Gayle crying you will never see it, like, 'I couldn't believe it and I love Men in Black.' No, it's never going to happen."
"I took that hit like Pacquiao mother f*****," Rock said, referring to Manny Pacquiao, a professional boxer.
Last year's Oscars was more about Smith slapping Rock than about the movies and winners. The tense exchange took place live during the Oscars ceremony when Rock who was hosting the show made a remark about Jada Pinkett Smith's hair.
Not Sparing Anyone
While Rock devoted his final ten minutes to the Smith controversy, his first hour expertly tore into sensitive subjects like performative wokeness and Meghan Markle. The comedian skillfully dissected Prince Harry's wife's never-ending fury about the purported racism of the British royal family.
"It's the royal family!" he said. "You didn't Google these motherf—-ers? What the f–k is she talking about 'She didn't know'?!
"That's like marrying into the Budweiser family and going, 'They drink a lot.'"
Regarding claims that a specific member of the royal family asked about the appearance of Markle's first child, Archie, Rock claimed, "That's not racist," Rock insisted. "Because even black people wanna know how brown the baby is gonna be!"
Some of Rock's most savage—and brilliant—moments focused on what he called "selective outrage," or society's propensity to single out certain people for being nearly equally guilty as others.
"One person does something, they get canceled. Another person does the exact same thing, nothing," he remarked. He's enraged by "the kind of people who play Michael Jackson songs but won't play R. Kelly. Same crime — one of 'em's just got better songs."
Rock is also tired of corporate brands adopting phony positions on important subjects in an effort to appear progressive. He claimed to have seen a placard against racism and intolerance at the Lululemon athletic wear store.
"Who gives a f–k?," he said. "You're just selling yoga pants!"
However, it was the Smith segment that everyone had been waiting for. While Rock argued that the "King Richard" star's fury had nothing to do with anything the comic had ever done, you could feel the already explosive energy in the room quadruple.
