Source: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin / Getty (Willow Smith; Will Smith)
Weeks after Will Smith opened up about processing the Oscars drama, Willow Smith discussed her reaction to the incident. After Smith walked on stage and slapped Chris Rock over a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s baldie, it dominated the news cycle for weeks to come. Willow Smith told Billboard that the media mayhem didn’t “rock me as much as my own internal demons.”
She went on to say that she understands that her father is human and makes mistakes and sometimes the world forgets that.
“I see my whole family as being human and I love and accept them for all their humanness,” the 21-year-old said. “Because of the position that we’re in, our humanness sometimes isn’t accepted, and we’re expected to act in a way that isn’t conducive to a healthy human life and isn’t conducive to being honest.”
Will Smith released a video recently where he said he reached out to Chris Rock to talk but Rock isn’t quite ready yet. He also apologized to Rock’s mother and brother, Tony Rock, whom he had a relationship with.
While dealing with the backlash from this, Smith said in the video that it hurts him to know that he “didn’t live up to people’s image and impression.”
“I am deeply remorseful and I’m trying to be remorseful without being ashamed of myself,” he said.
An inside source recently told Page Six that Rock didn’t see Smith’s apologies as sincere.
“He didn’t do this from the goodness of his heart,” the insider said. “Will has realized he is not as popular as he used to be, that the furor of ‘the slap’ is not going away, and he really has done lasting damage to his career. People just don’t forget that Will Smith assaulted someone on national television, then went out and partied like a rock star at the Vanity Fair party.”
