The Oscars slapgate has been the talk of the town since it went down on Sunday night (March 27), garnering more and more reactions each day. One of the latest to chime in with his thoughts is O.J. Simpson, who condemned Will Smith for losing his cool at the 2022 Academy Awards.
Speaking to TMZ, the former football player said that the actor was “wrong” for what he did to Chris Rock but admitted that he could relate to the emotions that triggered the surprising act.
“Look, I understood the feeling,” he began. “In my life, I’ve been through a lot of crap. I was raising two young kids and every comedian in the country had O.J. routines and don’t think I wouldn’t want to B-slap a couple of those guys, but you’ve got to accept it’s human.”
As fans know, Smith slapped Rock amid the annual ceremony for making a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith‘s hair. The quip poked fun at the actress, who suffers from alopecia, but Simpson doesn’t believe it was intolerable.
“I didn’t think it was all that egregious. I thought it was a semi-unfunny joke, but I don’t know,” he said. The ex-athlete then insisted that he would have been serving life in prison had he been the one to slap Rock or anyone else for that matter. “If I would have done that in front of a billion people watching around the world, they would have given me life without [parole],” he said.
Since the slap incident, Smith issued a public apology to Rock for his behavior. “I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris,” he said. “I was out of line and I was wrong. I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be. There is no place for violence in a world of love and kindness.”
He also apologized to attendees, viewers and to the Academy, which is currently conducting a review/investigation into his act.
See his interview below.