“I told him you were standing squarely on the shoulders of Sidney Poitier,” she recalls
Nearly a month after Will Smith issued the controversial slap heard around the world, Chris Rock’s mother, Rose Rock, is speaking out about the Oscars incident.
“I told someone when Will slapped Chris, he slapped all of us, but he really slapped me. Because when you hurt my child, you hurt me,” she told WIS reporter Billie Jean Shaw in an exclusive interview.
Although Mrs. Rock has never met Smith, she would ask him what he was thinking if given the opportunity to speak with him. “You did a slap but so many things could have happened from that. Chris could have stepped back and fallen. You really could have gotten taken out in handcuffs.”
She added, “You didn’t think. You reacted to your wife giving you the side-eye, and you went up and you made her day because she was mulled over laughing when it happened.”
The mother of 10, motivational speaker, and author also discussed Chris’ upbringing and her decision to watch the ceremony from home, despite being her son’s guest in previous years. She revealed Chris was excited about presenting Questlove with the Oscar and admitted that she thought the slap was staged before Smith started yelling obscenities.
“I couldn’t reach out to him at that point. There was nothing to do and that’s a hard thing for a mother,” she shared. “At that moment, and I told him you were standing squarely on the shoulders of Sidney Poitier because that was someone that we all looked up to.”
Chris Rock’s mother says she’s never met Smith and doesn’t see Smith’s suspension from the Oscars as true punishment as he doesn’t go every year anyway. However, she doesn’t think Smith’s award should have been taken away.
