Chris Rock turned down the offer to host the 2023 Oscars after Will Smith’s slap
the comedian Chris Rock revealed to have rejected a proposal made by the Hollywood Academy to present next year’s Oscars, shortly after the slap Will Smith gave him in the last delivery of these awards.
Rock spoke of the offer during a monologue show held at the Arizona Financial Theater in the city of Phoenix (Arizona, United States) this Sunday and which was echoed by the Arizona Republic media.
The comedian said he had turned down the offer because it would be like “return to the scene of the crime and compared it to the murder perpetrated by former football player OJ Simpson against his wife Nicole Brown.
“It would be like asking Nicole Brown Simpson to come back to the restaurant.” Rock affirmed referring to the crime committed by the former athlete after she left some glasses in an Italian restaurant.
Rock referred to the slap in the face that Will Smith gave him at the beginning of his show in Phoenix, which is part of the “Ego Death” tour that began last April.
With a packed theater for his hour-and-a-half show, Rock began talking about how a person could become famous after becoming a victim.
Then, according to the Arizona Reporter, someone in the audience asked him to “talk about it” and Rock ended up recounting the incident.
And it is that the comedian also assured that the blow that Smith gave him caused him physical pain because the actor’s winner is “bigger” and more corpulent than him.
“The state of Nevada would not allow a fight between me and Will Smith.”, he joked.
Rock also mentioned during his show that he was approached to star in a commercial for the next edition of the Super Bowl and that he also rejected, although he did not reveal what brand the commercial was for.
At the last Oscar gala, on March 27, Will Smith reacted violently to a joke by Chris Rock about his wife’s baldness, Jada Pinkett Smith, who made him get up from his seat, go up on stage at Dolby Theater and slap Rock live.
Rock had come out to present the award for best documentary and made a joke about the shaved head of Pinkett Smith, who had publicly acknowledged that she suffers from alopecia, comparing her to Lieutenant O’Neil in the Ridley Scott film.
At the end of July, Smith published a video in which he apologized to the comedian for what happened and after his wife had made different public appearances in which he urged them to reconcile.
“Chris, I apologize. My behavior was unacceptable and I am here to speak whenever you are willing”, Smith said then.
In addition, in April the Board of Governors of the Academy approved to veto his attendance at the Oscars, and any other event organized by this institution, for the next ten years.
A week earlier, the actor had already resigned from being part of the Academy, which ruled out his immediate expulsion as the main sanction.
(With information from EFE)
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