With a wave of Monday-morning celebrity opinions and an ongoing discourse of Twitter hot-takes, there is only one opinion the public has not yet heard since the now-infamous Academy Awards incident that took place between Will Smith and Chris Rock during Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony broadcast.
That, of course, is Rock’s own sentiments.
With ticket sales reportedly skyrocketing since he was seen in a physical altercation with the Best Actor winner on live television, fans and supporters anticipated that Rock would get into the nitty-gritty of everything Oscars-related while making the first tour stop on his Ego Death comedy tour in Boston, Massachusets. Rock was slapped by Smith after making a passing joke at his wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s bald haircut while presenting the award for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards.
Rock’s take was so anticipated, in fact, that multiple local news outlets were said to have been on the scene with camera crews to be the first to report.
Entering the stage of the theater in an all-white suit, Rock was greeted by thunderous applause and a standing ovation.
“How was your weekend?” he started, naturally drawing a swell of laughter from the crowd in the 1100-seat auditorium.
However, rather than tailoring a portion of his set specifically to the incident, Rock simply addressed the elephant in the room and moved on with his planned show business as usual.
“I don’t have a bunch of shit about what happened, so if you came to hear that, I have a whole show I wrote before this weekend,” he told the audience. “I’m still kind of processing what happened. So, at some point, I’ll talk about that shit. And it will be serious and funny.”
In the meantime, Rock had a pre-prepared show to get started.
“I’m going to tell some jokes. It’s nice to just be out,” he said, beginning his set as planned.
Fans will have to continue to wait to see when, and exactly how, Rock will address the matter at hand. Take a listen to his statements, captured via Variety, below:
Smith notably issued a public apology to Rock, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Williams family, and the cast and crew of King Richard for his violent impulsive behavior, noting that his action is not one that he is proud of.
“Jokes at my expense are a part of the job, but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally,” he wrote in a statement on Instagram.