Selective Outrage: what Chris Rock says about Will Smith and the Oscars in new Netflix special

Chris Rock has broken his silence over his altercation with Will Smith at last year’s Oscars in a new Netflix special called Selective Outrage.

In a moment “widely regarded to be the most astonishing in Oscars history”, said The Telegraph, Smith strode on to the stage after Rock made a joke at his wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s expense and forcefully slapped Rock’s face, before angrily yelling expletives at Rock, saying: “Keep my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth!”

Now in Rock’s new special, the high-profile comedian “finally broke down the aftermath of the on-stage smack” by ending the set with a number of jokes about the Hollywood couple, said Variety

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“You all know what happened to me, getting smacked by Suge Smith. Everybody knows. Everybody f***ing knows,” Rock said. “I got smacked like a year ago… and people are like, ‘Did it hurt?’ It still hurts. I got ‘Summertime’ ringing in my ears.”

The title of Rock’s show was also a reference to Smith, he told the audience. “Will Smith practises selective outrage,” Rock said. “Outrage because everybody knows what the fuck happened.”

“For viewers that might not have understood”, added Variety, Rock was referring to the Red Table Talk episode featuring Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, “where she admitted to having an affair with another man”, said the magazine. “She hurt him way more than he hurt me,” Rock added.

Rock also used the set to make a claim about his own history with Pinkett Smith. According to Rock, Pinkett Smith attempted to force him to quit hosting the Oscars in 2016 because her husband didn’t get a Best Actor nomination.

That year, Smith “was being tipped for a possible nod for the drama Concussion, but he ultimately failed to make the list of nominees”, said the Independent.

Rock quipped: “Years ago, his wife said I should quit the Oscars. I shouldn’t host ’cause her man didn’t get nominated for Concussion. And then he gives me a f***ing concussion.”

Rock also took aim at Meghan Markle and the royal family, with the comedian joking about the Duchess of Sussex “Going on Oprah, saying ‘I had no idea how racist they were’. That’s the Royal family. You didn’t Google those motherf*****s? They’re the original racists. They invented colonialism.”