As Jada Pinkett-Smith’s memoir Worthy prepares to hit shelves on Oct. 17, the Girls Trip star is dropping mini-spoilers to wet our whistles. The latest? That Chris Rock once asked her out back in. the day (cue fake shock and awe.)
Speaking in a lengthy cover issue interview with People magazine, Jada divulged a part of her book where she described how the Everybody Hates Chris star once asked her out on a date amid rumors that she and hubby Will Smith were getting divorced.
“I think every summer all the reports would come out that me and Will were getting a divorce. And this particular summer, Chris, he thought that we were getting a divorce,” she explained. “So he called me and basically he was like, ‘I’d love to take you out.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ He was like, ‘Well, aren’t you and Will getting a divorce?’ I was like, ‘No. Chris, those are just rumors.’ He was appalled. And he profusely apologized and that was that.”
Now, I don’t know about you but in my eyes, this little tidbit of info helps put a lot things into context. Not only do we know that the comedian previously dissed Jada for protesting the Oscars back in 2016 when he was the host at the time, but now that we know his advances were rejected years prior—that jab and the subsequent slap-worthy jab he took at her at the 2022 Oscars appear to show a pattern.
And sure, you could argue that everyone is free game when it comes to comedians. But when you put those two aforementioned things together—the previous jabs and him being rejected by her; multiply them by the fact that he called both her and Will “bitches” while discussing their “entanglement” situation in his Netflix special, Selective Outrage, earlier this year; the fact that he allegedly told her moments after the Oscars slap that he didn’t mean her any harm but then blamed it on her in his special (“Nobody’s picking on this bitch, she started this shit” were his exact words); and divide it by the fact that Chris held the special in her hometown of Baltimore out of all the cities in the country—“free game” sounds like a convenient excuse.