Will Smith appeared on Monday’s episode of The Daily Show With Trevor Noah to address many things, not the least of which was his infamous Oscars slap. Smith shocked and enraged the world when he slapped comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars for a joke he made about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, back in March. During his appearance on The Daily Show, host Trevor Noah asked Smith what drove him to behave in such a way during the ceremony. Smith replied, “There’s many nuances and complexities to it, you know, but at the end of the day, I just, I lost it, you know. I guess what I would say, you just never know what somebody’s going through.”
Will Smith Gets Emotional Discussing Oscars Slap on ‘The Daily Show’
As the interview continued, Noah addressed the difficult trials Will Smith addressed in his memoir, released last year. Smith mentioned in the memoir that he has always been afraid of conflict. Noah suggested that things had been “relentlessly shitty,” and Smith may have been standing up for the wrong thing at the wrong time. Smith replied, saying, “It was a lot of things. It was the little boy that watched his father beat up his mother, you know, is that you know, all of that just bubbled up in that moment. You know, I just that’s not who I wanna be.” Smith continued, “That was a rage that had been bottled for a really long time.”
The slap at the Oscars has certainly cost Smith a lot. He was forced to resign from the Academy, and it appears that Chris Rock is not ready to patch things up. However, Smith seemed most concerned with the people in his life he disappointed. He discussed being with his nine-year-old nephew after winning the Oscar: “He stayed up late to see his Uncle Will. We are sitting in the kitchen, he’s on my lap holding the Oscar, and he’s just like, ‘Why did you hit that man, Uncle Will?’” Smith shed many tears during the interview.
Will Smith is currently promoting his latest movie Emancipation. In an interview before his appearance on The Daily Show, regarding how the Oscars slap may hurt the film’s success, Smith said, “My deepest concern is my team. The people on this team have done some of the best work of their careers, and my deepest hope is that my actions don’t penalize my team.” Regardless, he respects that audiences may not be ready to see him on screen so soon after the incident.
