LOS ANGELES (Audacy) – Actor Will Smith discussed the infamous Oscars slap during an appearance on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah" on Monday night.
In his first late-night talk show since the incident, the Philadelphia native told Noah it was “a horrifying night” and that “at the end of the day, I lost it.”
During the March ceremony, Chris Rock was presenting when he made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head. Smith walked up on stage, slapped Rock across the face and then yelled after sitting down, “Keep my wife’s name out your f***ing mouth.”
Following the incident, Smith resigned from the Academy and was banned from the Oscars and other Academy events for 10 years.
When Noah pointed out that Smith seemed dazed afterward, Smith agreed, saying, “I was gone, man. I was gone. That was rage that had been bottled for a really long time.”
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Smith, who got emotional during the interview, recalled a moment he shared with his 9-year-old nephew after the ceremony.
“We came home and it’s like, he stayed up late to see his Uncle Will,” Smith explained. “And we’re sitting in my kitchen and he’s on my lap holding the Oscar, and he’s just like, ‘Why did you hit that man, Uncle Will?’”
This isn’t the first time the actor addressed the slap. In a video posted on YouTube in July, Smith apologized to Rock, as well as Rock’s mother and brother.
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“I wasn’t thinking about how many people got hurt in that moment,” he said. “This is probably irreparable.”
Rock revealed in during a comedy show in Arizona that he was asked to host next year’s ceremony, to which he said that returning to the Oscars stage would “be like asking Nicole Brown Simpson to go back to the restaurant.”