Jada Pinkett is releasing a memoir book pretty soon and that could mean one thing only. Lots of tea! Jada is no stranger to sharing intimate moments of her private life. Ever since she started her Red Table Talk podcast, Pinkett has been sharing very intimate (and often controversial) aspects of her life and her family’s privacy.
While promoting her upcoming book Worthy, she’s been sharing some juicy gossip to entice us to read the book, and if these are just a preview, we can’t imagine what is she saying about the book! But we digress, besides revealing that she and Will Smith have been separated for over six years, she also confessed that Chris Rock once asked her out on a date before the infamous Oscar slap!
Was this the real reason behind Will Smith’s anger? Maybe, but what is true is that Jada, Will, and Chris have had a very complicated relationship that dates back years and years! Let’s delve into that!
Jada and Chris: A History of Tensions
In an interview with People Magazine, Jada Pinkett revised her relationship with Chris Rock. She started with the Oscars incident and how she hasn’t spoken to him since nor does she have the desire to do so. “Here’s my desire: I just hope that all the misunderstanding around this can be cleared up and that there can be peace,” she pointed out.
But the tensions go way back before the 2022 Oscar incident. According to Jada, and this is something that she delves into in her book, all the beef, or misunderstandings as she calls them, started at the 2016 Oscars. If you remember well, that year Jada Pinkett started a campaign against the Academy for overlooking Will Smith and his work in the movie Concussion.
Jada helped spark the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, noting the lack of diversity in the nominations of all categories. Pinkett expected the black community to jump on her protest. That year, Chris Rock was chosen to host the ceremony and Jada publicly shamed him for taking the job and not helping boycott the show.
“I think that there might be some misunderstanding between Chris and me 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.”
Chris being Chris, didn’t hesitate to make jokes about Jada’s protest during his monologue. However, it was later known that Chris didn’t like being signaled by Jada publicly. Still, as Pinkett recalled in the interview, both apologized at the time and things seemed normal for some years, until the slap in 2022.
Right after the shameless incident, during a break, Chris Rock approached Jada and “tried to apologize to me. He said, ‘I didn’t mean you any harm.’ I said, ‘I can’t talk about this now, Chris. This is some old s—.’ I thought this was about the Oscar 2016 and the stuff that they had before I even came into the picture in the late ‘80s. I’ve got to leave that to Will and Chris to talk about, but they got their stuff for sure.”
Did Chris Rock Ask Jada out on a Date?
So, when did Chris ask Jada out on a date? First things first. As mentioned, one of the big details Jada has revealed while promoting her book is her separation from Will Smith over six years ago. Still, although she says it’s been hard to actually get completely separated, she mentioned how for years there’s been speculation about their divorce.
“I think every summer all the reports would come out that me and Will were getting a divorce. And this particular summer, Chris, thought that we were getting a divorce. So he called me and basically he was like, ‘I’d love to take you out.’ 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.”
When did this happen? It’s unclear as she doesn’t mention a specific date. But taking into account what she revealed before, it must’ve happened before the Oscar slap of 2022, and possibly way before the 2016 #OscarsSoWhite tensions. According to Jada, between the 2016 and the 2022 Oscars, they hadn’t spoken at all.
So, could this mean this happened way before and that’s why Will Smith had some beef with Rock? Probably! I guess we’ll have to read the book to see if this is cleared up! Worthy will be released this October, 17.
