Jada Pinkett Smith has broken her silence two days after her husband, Will Smith, slapped Chris Rock onstage at the 94th Academy Awards ceremony last Sunday.
Earlier today, the actress posted a message on her Instagram that read, “This is a season for healing and I’m here for it.”
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Though the social media post is cryptic, this is the first one Pinkett Smith has made since the infamous Oscars slap. The incident has caused a massive media firestorm that sees celebrities and fans taking sides, but if Pinkett Smith’s post is indeed about the shocking Oscar moment, then it’s safe to assume that the actress is open to mending fences.
What was Jada Pinkett Smith’s initial reaction to Chris Rock’s G.I. Jane joke?
In the last hour of the Oscars ceremony, Rock took the stage as a presenter to unveil the recipient of Best Documentary Feature. Prior to revealing the winner, Rock made a joke about Pinkett Smith’s shaved head, saying in part, “Jada, I love ya. G.I. Jane 2, can’t wait to see ya.”
The remark was a reference to Demi Moore’s shaved head in the 1997 movie G.I. Jane, with Rock suggesting that Pinkett Smith is ready for a G.I. Jane sequel. But since her bald head is a result of her ongoing battle with alopecia, a diagnosis she received in 2018, Pinkett Smith was visibly unamused by the joke, rolling her eyes from her seat.
Seconds later, her husband walked on stage, approached Rock, and hit the comedian in the face in front of the audience and millions watching at home. Back at his table, Smith shouted to a stunned Rock, “Keep my wife’s name out of your f—ing mouth.”
How is Jada Pinkett Smith coping with alopecia?
During a May 2018 episode of her Facebook Watch series, Red Table Talk, Pinkett Smith admitted that it was “terrifying” when she first started to lose her hair. “I was in the shower one day and had just handfuls of hair in my hands and I was just like, ‘Oh, my God, am I going bald?’” the actress recalled.
But after taking “every type of test” and doctors were still unable to deduce why she started losing her hair, Pinkett Smith tried to find peace with her condition.
“Even in my terror and even in my fear and in the moment of just going, ‘Oh, my God, like, why are you so terrified that you might lose your hair?’ I really had to put it in a spiritual perspective of, like, the higher power takes so much from people,” she shared. “People are out here who have cancer, people who have sick children. I watch the higher power take things every day. And, by golly, if the higher power wants to take your hair, that’s hair? When I looked at it from that perspective, it really did settle me.”
And just a week before the Oscars slap, Pinkett Smith posted short clip set to India Arie’s song I Am Not My Hair on TikTok, in which she opened up about the pressure she used to feel to have her hair look “European” and the freedom she feels now that her head is shaved.
“I liked my hair out wild and curly, but nobody wanted that. I had to learn to get the courage to go, I’m not doing it, which is why I feel the freedom today. I don’t give two craps what people feel about this bald head of mine. Cause guess what? I love it,” the actress said in the video, which you can watch below:
@jadapinkettsmith ✨Crown Act✨ Be proud of your crown❣️ #iamnotmyhair #hairjourney