Will Smith says he “lost it” when he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars in March. “That was a rage that had been bottled for a really long time,” Smith said. Smith said who he was in that moment was “not who I want to be” The Academy has sanctioned Smith by banning him from attending the Oscars for the next 10 years.”It was the little boy that watched his father beat up his mother, you know. All of that just bubbled up,” Smith told Trevor Noah on Monday night’s “The Daily Show” “I was going through something that night. Not that that justifies my behavior at all,” he said of the Oscars incident. “And I guess what I would say, you just never know what somebody is going through,” he added. “It’s like I understood the idea where they say hurt people hurt people,” the actor said of his slap at Chris Rock. “I understand the idea … that people are hurt by what I did,” he told Noah, who pointed out the negative things that have been said about Smith and his family on the internet. “It was a lot of things,” Smith replied, adding, “I’m not a bad person. I’m a really good person. It’s just that I was in a really bad place at the time” The actor is promoting his forthcoming film, “Emancipation,” in New York and Los Angeles. He also issued a public apology on social media in July, saying he was sorry for what he did and apologized to Rock and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the incident. He has since issued a second public apology, calling it a “mistake” and saying he’s sorry for his behavior. “You can’t change the past,” he says. “But you can try to change the future,” he adds. “If you want to, you can work your way out of it,” Smith says of his apology, adding that he hopes Rock will forgive him for his actions and apologize to the Academy for sanctioning him for the Oscars slap in the first place. The actor has since apologized for the slap and issued an apology to Rock, saying it was a mistake and that he’s “sincerely sorry” for what happened in the past. He said he’s also apologized to his family and friends for the way he acted in the aftermath of the incident, which he called a “horrific night” and a “night that I will never forget” He also said that he is sorry for the negative comments about his family that have appeared on the Internet. He was promoting his upcoming film “E mancipation” in the interview with Trevor Noah, which airs Monday night on the “Daily Show” It’s the first time Smith has appeared on a talk show since the slap. The film is set to be released in theaters in September. It will be his first since he was banned from the Academy Awards in March 2013. The Academy sanctioned him by banning Smith from the Oscars.
Will Smith has opened up about the slap he received from a man at the Oscars, telling Trevor Noah on The Daily Show that ‘hurt people hurt people’.
