Will Smith has a new movie coming out on Apple TV+ in a couple days, titled Emancipation. Typically, that would mean Smith would be off on a full-blown press tour, hyping the movie as much as he possibly could. Those efforts are slightly complicated this year by Smith’s actions at last spring’s Oscars, when he slapped Chris Rock on stage in the middle of the ceremony in response to one of the comedian’s jokes about Jada Pinkett Smith.
Smith did however stop by The Daily Show. After discussing Emancipation for about half the interview, he and Trevor Noah then did get into the subject on everyone’s minds: The Oscars slap and its aftermath. While acknowledging that it doesn’t justify his behavior that night “at all,” Smith claimed that you “just never know what somebody’s going through” and that the slap was the result of…
…a lot of things. It was the little boy that watched his father beat up his mother, you know, is that you know, all of that just bubbled up in that moment. You know, I just that’s not who I wanna be.
You can watch their entire conversation below:
Smith’s Emancipation premieres in theaters on December 2.It then debuts on Apple TV+ on December 9. Directed by Antoine Fuqua, it tells the true story of the man featured in the famous photograph “Whipped Peter,” which shows the horribly bruised and scarred back of an escaped slave, and had a major impact on public opinion about slavery during the 1860s. No matter how Emancipation is received, Smith won’t be back at the Oscars next year; he has been banned from returning to the ceremony for ten years.
Here is the film’s trailer:
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