A joke about Will Smith featured in Chris Rock: Selective Outrage was edited out after Rock missed it on his live show.
During a series of jokes about the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, near the end of Rock’s March 4 show — the streamer’s first-ever global live event — the comedian messed up his own joke as he recalled a conversation he allegedly had with the Smiths at his 2016 Oscars hosting gig.
“Years ago his wife said I should quit the Oscars; I shouldn’t host because her man wasn’t nominated for Emancipation, the biggest shit of all time! Rock told the Baltimore crowd, before quickly acknowledging his mistake. “Not EmancipationI screwed up the joke.
The joke was meant to reference Smith’s 2015 sports drama Concussionwhich was based on Jeanne Marie Laskas’ 2009 talk on NFL and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) “Game Brain”, published by QG. For Netflix subscribers who watched the replay version as it aired, that portion of the live special has been removed.
A source close to the production tells The Hollywood Reporter that Rock knew about the edit, with the comedian and Netflix working together on the final streaming cut.
After the misstep, Rock continued and delivered the joke with precision. “She started this shit. She said I, a fucking adult, should quit her job because “My husband wasn’t nominated for Concussion,'” he said.
The instance Rock mentioned took place the same year that Pinkett Smith boycotted the ceremony amid the #OscarsSoWhite movement, which focused on the Film Academy’s history of racial exclusion in its lists of nominees and winners.
Smith took to the stage at the 2022 Oscars last March and slapped Rock after he made an unscripted joke about Pinkett Smith’s bald hairstyle, which she wore as a result of alopecia, an immune system-related condition. The joke followed one Rock made during his monologue while hosting the 2016 show, in which he said, “Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. I was not invited.
Rock also made a separate joke at the 2016 ceremony about Pinkett Smith and Concussion. “(You) said, ‘It’s not fair that Will is so good (in Concussion) and was not nominated!” he said. “You’re right! Nor is it fair that Will was paid $20 million for wild west wild! ALL RIGHT?”
In THR’the examination of Selective outrage, chief television critic Daniel Fienberg wrote, “Netflix tried to create a live-action stunt out of Rock doing some stand-up material he’s been doing on the road for 10 months, and the only thing that would tell you the special was live was – after making viewers wait 61 minutes for the inevitable Will Smith material – Rock fucks the joke. A joke he’s probably made across the country dozens of times.
The hour-long comedy special, highly anticipated for featuring the comedian’s response to Smith slapping him, ranked seventh in Netflix’s US top 10 but did not land in the streamer’s top global ranking.