On “The Daily Show,” Will Smith discusses the slap, saying, “Hurt People, Hurt People”
“I took my hard and made it hard for other people,” the Oscar-winning actor told Trevor Noah.
Will Smith made his first appearance on The Daily Show With Trevor Noah since slapping Chris Rock on the Dolby Theatre stage at this year’s Oscars on Monday, marking his return to late-night television.
Smith began by calling it “a horrific night” when Noah asked him about his journey in the months following the slapping incident.
“[There are] many nuances and complexities to it, you know, but at the end of the day, I just, I lost it, you know,” Smith told Noah. “I guess what I would say, is you just never know what somebody’s going through.”
He continued by explaining that he was going through something that night, not that that “justifies my behavior at all.”
“You’re asking, what did I learn? And it’s that we just got to be nice to each other, man,” Smith said. “You know, it’s like, it’s hard. And I guess the thing that was most painful for me is, I took my hard and made it hard for other people. You know, it’s like, I understood the idea when they say hurt people hurt people.”
Noah said that a buddy had called him and claimed that they had seen the real Smith performing that evening. Noah disagreed, adding that he believed the actor had only stood up for the wrong cause at the wrong moment. Smith responded for the first time when the Daily Show host said that things were “relentlessly awful” and continued.
“It was a lot of things,” the actor said. “It was the little boy that watched his father beat up his mother, you know, is that you know, all of that just bubbled up at that moment. You know, I just that’s not who I wanna be.”
The Daily Show audience cheered as Noah admitted to Smith that he thinks he made a mistake and doesn’t believe that’s who the actor is, and Smith started crying. He later admitted that he had a great deal of anger that had been suppressed for a long time.
“I had to forgive myself for being human,” Smith said. “Trust me, there’s nobody that hates the fact that I’m human more than me. And just finding that space for myself within myself to be human. It’s like, I want, I’ve always wanted to be Superman. I’ve always wanted to swoop in and save the damsel in distress, you know. And I had to humble down, you know, and realize that I’m a flawed human, and I still have an opportunity to go out in the world and contribute in a way that fills my heart, and hopefully helps other people.”
Smith expressed his “deepest hope” that his behavior at the 2022 Academy Awards “don’t penalize my team” in an interview with Washington, D.C.’s Fox station before his Daily Show appearance. He added he “fully” appreciates if fans aren’t ready to watch him in his next picture Emancipation.
If someone isn’t ready, I entirely understand. Smith told Fox 5 that he would “totally respect that and give them their space to not be ready.”
Smith said that his “deepest worry is my team” and being able to celebrate the film’s artistic triumphs apart from his actions in March, even if he noted that people’s varied reactions to seeing him again. Smith singled out the contributions of the filmmaker Antoine Fuqua, the photographer Robert Richardson, the production designer Naomi Shohan, costume designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck, and co-star Charmaine Bingwa as worthy of praise, with the actor calling the Apple Originals Film Fuqua’s “greatest work of his entire career.”
“The people on this team have done some of the best work of their entire careers, and my deepest hope is that my actions don’t penalize my team,” he said. “So at this point, that’s what I’m working for. That’s what I’m hoping for. I’m hoping that the material, the power of the film, the timeliness of the story — I’m hoping that the good that can be done — will open people’s hearts at a minimum to see and recognize and support the incredible artists in and around this film.”
Smith revealed that his choice to make the movie based on the true story of “Whipped Peter” was based on its representation of a different side of Black identity and history during the gloomy era of mass American enslavement during a special screening of the movie hosted by Apple and the NAACP in early October.
“I never wanted to show us like that. And then this picture came along. And this is not a film about slavery. This is a film about freedom. This is a film about resilience. This is a film about faith,” he said. “This is a film about the heart of a man — what could be called the first viral image. Cameras had just been created, and the image of whipped Peter went around the world. It was a rallying cry against slavery, and this was a story that exploded and blossomed in my heart that I wanted to be able to deliver to you in a way that only Antoine Fuqua could deliver.”
In a November interview, Fuqua echoed Smith’s most recent remarks about the impact of the movie and reaffirmed what he had previously said to The Hollywood Reporter: “I would like audiences to see the truth and be inspired by it.” The director then gave his own justification for keeping the movie in theatres despite the backlash.
“My conversation was always, ‘Isn’t 400 years of slavery, of brutality, more important than one bad moment?’ We were in Hollywood, and [there have] been some really ugly things that have taken place, and we’ve seen a lot of people get awards that have done some really nasty things,” he explained. “So, I think Apple considered all those things, and we discussed a lot of those things. Then, a decision was made by the people in charge of distribution and the money at Apple — and I’m grateful. I’m really grateful.”
As a result of Smith slapping Rock, he added, no one involved with the movie ever discussed “the movie not coming out,” but Apple was “very careful” in how it handled the incident and the reactions to it. Final words from Fuqua were, “I hope we can move forward and get past it. This was an unfortunate event between the two men.”