Will Smith has returned to the public eye, appearing on The Daily Show to promote his upcoming film Emancipation. Arguably more significantly, the actor also spoke to host Trevor Noah about that infamous Oscars slap, having physically assaulted Chris Rock on stage over a jab about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair loss earlier this year.
Smith subsequently apologised, resigned from the Academy, and was banned from all Academy events for the next 10 years.
“That was a horrific night, as you can imagine,” Smith told Noah. “There’s many nuances and complexities to it. But at the end of the day, I just, I lost it. And I guess what I would say [is] you just never know what somebody’s going through.”
Smith proceeded to explain that the strangers next to you could be experiencing personal crises but you’d have no idea.
“And I was going through something that night,” Smith continued. “Not that that justifies my behaviour at all. I would just say, you’re asking what did I learn, and it’s that we just gotta be nice to each other, man. 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. And it’s like, I understood the idea when they say hurt people hurt people.”
