Jada Pinkett Smith’s Memoir Reveals She Was “Unclear On The Reason Why” Will Smith Was “So Upset” With Chris Rock Since They Were Secretly Separated

Jada Pinkett Smith is baring it all in her upcoming memoir, Worthy.

An excerpt published by People shows Pinkett Smith detailing her exact experience and thought process as she witnessed Will Smith slap Chris Rock at the Oscars in 2022.

The actress wrote that, prior to the incident, her “stomach clenched” when she saw Rock listed as one of the presenters of the evening. “He had been known to take swipes at me — and from the Oscar stage, no less. That had been in 2016, six years earlier, during what became known as #OscarsSoWhite,” she recalled.

Though she tried to be “optimistic,” her fears came true: Rock spotted her in the audience while on-stage and improvised a joke about her alopecia.

“It’s not until Will yells from his seat back up at Chris to ‘keep my wife’s name out your f—in’ mouth,’ and then repeats it, that I perceive the gravity of the situation, and that, no, it had not been a skit,” Pinkett Smith wrote in her memoir.

She also wrote that she was “unclear on the reason why Will is so upset” since they had been secretly separated and “living separate lives” for six years by then.

Regardless of their separation, she revealed, “But when I hear Will yell ‘wife’ in the chaos of the moment, an internal shift of, ‘Oh s— . . . I am his wife!‘ happens instantly.”

She wrote that the moment transported her back to her childhood and triggered her fight or flight instincts. “This is when sixteen-year-old Jada appeared — I’m back in a club back in Baltimore, a fight has broken out, and s— could start popp’n,” she said.

She also added that, while Rock’s joke may have bothered her, it was not because of her own experiences with the condition.

“That was indeed a very light joke, as many expressed, but it was not about me. I was frustrated that the majority of folks can’t seem to understand how devastating alopecia can be,” she wrote.

The actress also added a pointed jab to the Academy Awards and its newfound “political correctness,” writing, “Now the Oscars, in all its political correctness, was telling the world it was okay to make jokes at the expense of a woman suffering from alopecia?”

Despite the dramatic incident, Pinkett Smith still stood by her husband.

“But no matter what, Will and I are in this together,” she wrote.

Pinkett Smith’s memoir Worthy hits the shelves on Oct. 17.