Jada Pinkett Smith is spilling it all in her upcoming memoir, Worthy.
Among the surprising revelations was her claim that Chris Rock once asked her out after rumors that she was getting a divorce from Will Smith.
Jada told People: “I think every summer all the reports would come out that me and Will were getting a divorce. And this particular summer, Chris, he 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?’"
Jada said: "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.”
Jada also reflected on what happened with the three of them at the 2022 Oscars, when Chris was slapped by Will after making a G.I. Jane joke about her.
Jada — who has alopecia — said she had her own "premonition right before the incident on the Oscar stage. It flashed through my mind as Chris Rock's face came across the screen as one of the presenters that night. In fact, my stomach clenched."
She said: "[Chris] had been known to take swipes at me — and from the Oscar stage, no less. That had been in 2016, six years earlier, during what became known as #OscarsSoWhite."
Jada said she wished she'd talked to Chris in 2016 to tell him that, even though she'd decided to boycott the show, she wished him well. But she said, eventually, they did speak, and she thought things between them were fine.
“He apologized and I apologized to him as well,” Jada recalled. “So I actually thought that we were good, that the hatchet was buried between us. And we hadn't talked since then, until 2022 came.”
Jada said that when Will hit Chris, she initially didn't even think it was real. "I thought, ‘This is a skit.' ... I was like, ‘There’s no way that Will hit him. It wasn’t until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realized it wasn’t a skit.”
Jada said when she was alone with Will, she checked to see if he was okay — but she was also "unclear on the reason why Will is so upset," as they had been secretly separated since 2016. "We had been living separate lives and were there as family, not as husband and wife. But when I hear Will yell 'wife' in the chaos of the moment, an internal shift of 'Oh shit...I am his wife!' happens instantly."
Jada said she also spoke to Chris that night, explaining he approached her and "tried to apologize."
"He said, ‘I didn't mean you any harm.’ I said, ‘I can't talk about this now, Chris. This is some old shit.’ I thought this was [about] the Oscar 2016 and … their 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.”
Regarding how she felt about Chris's joke, Jada said it was hurtful, and she rolled her eyes, thinking about "people I had met whose condition was far worse than mine." But she also said she gets it, coming from a comedian.
"I mean, that's what comedians do," she explained. "I would just have to say that I am not really here to make any judgment on how people decide to express themselves and express their art. I'll say that several times, I've had my feelings hurt, for sure. I've had my feelings hurt a lot by Chris. But at the end of the day, too, being in the spotlight, it comes with the territory."
You already know people had a lot to say about this online.
What are your thoughts on all this? Tell me down in the comments below.
You can also read more from Jada's interview with People here and grab Worthy when it hits shelves on Oct. 17.