The family of Nicole Brown Simpson is speaking out days after Chris Rock’s tasteless joke about hosting the 2023 Oscars.
Earlier this week, we told you that during a comedy set in Arizona over the weekend, the comedian and Fargo actor said he was approached to host the 2023 Oscars but decided to turn it down—likening it to “returning to a crime scene.” Show attendees at the Arizona Financial Theatre said that Rock then referenced the O.J. Simpson murder trial and said that coming back to the event would be like “asking Nicole Brown Simpson to go back to the restaurant where she left her eyeglasses before being killed.”
Well, that comment didn’t go over too well with Simpson’s family, more specifically, her sister Tanya who called the comedian out for the “distasteful” joke and for his comment towards Jada Pinkett Smith during this year’s Academy Awards.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tanya took to Instagram to express her disdain in a post of Rock: “Nothing Is more lovely then to wake up on a Tuesday morning (Not) with TMZ calling you saying Chris Rock made a horrible “joke” about Nicole. BEYOND distasteful!”
She continued, “Nothing funny about his joke towards Jada as she suffers from a physical condition and nothing funny about equating an Oscar host invitation to a double homicide. I always thought he was funny, but he crossed the line with this one. In other words, Y’all!!!! Stop using my sister, OJ and Ron part of your cricking comedy act. There are families behind this tragedy!”
Per ET, Christopher Darden, the prosecutor in Simpson’s trial, also echoed Brown’s sentiments in a separate post to his private Instagram account, which read:
“I don’t advocate violence but I guess this guy hasn’t learned his lesson. I guess Will failed to slap any sense into him. I know some people who are deeply hurt and offended by this joke. Lame as it is. I mean he has every right to say what he said but maybe if some of his jokes were more general in nature and not so specific as to mock specific people. Nicole was somebody’s mother bruh and Ron was a son and a brother, you know? Do you always have to make a joke at somebody else’s expense? Ain’t you learned nothing from the slap that was heard around the world?”
Rock has yet to respond to any of the backlash.