Jada Pinkett Smith has claimed Chris Rock asked her out on a date.
The 52-year-old star – who has revealed she and husband Will Smith have been secretly separated for the last seven years – recalled a moment amid divorce rumours in the past when the comedian actually phoned her thinking she was available.
She told People magazine: “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?’ He was like, ‘Well, aren’t you and Will getting a divorce?’
“I was like, ‘No. Chris, those are just rumours.’ He was appalled. And he profusely apologised and that was that.”
Pinkett Smith didn’t reveal when the exchange happened, but she admitted she hasn’t spoken to the 58-year-old comedian since the 2022 Oscars when Smith, 55, slapped him in the face over a joke about her shaved head, which sparked controversy due to her alopecia.
She said: “No, I haven’t talked to Chris…[Do I have] any desire to talk to Chris? Here’s my desire: I just hope that all the misunderstanding around this can be cleared up and that there can be peace.”
Asked if she was offended by the joke, she refused to pass “judgement” on someone else’s art.
But she added: “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.”
Pinkett Smith thinks there was a “misunderstanding” between the pair going back to the 2016 Oscars, which he hosted and she publicly protested after the Academy Awards failed to nominate anyone of colour in the four acting categories.
They both apologised at the time, and she has now confirmed he also said sorry in the immediate aftermath of his joke and Smith’s slap at the 2022 ceremony.
She recalled: “Chris came down to the end of the stage and tried to apologise 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… 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.”
