The 2022 Oscars put on quite the performance, with Will Smith and Chris Rock stealing the show with a moment that will go down in Oscars history. Until now, Jada Pinkett Smith has been mostly silent on the matter. However, she finally addressed the slap during her Red Table Talk on Wednesday.

It seems Smith wants to put the action at the Academy Awards behind her and focus on the message she wants to send about alopecia. After all, that’s how this whole debacle began.

This is a really important Red Table Talk on alopecia. Considering what I’ve been through with my own health and what happened at the Oscars, thousands have reached out to me with their stories. I’m using this moment to give our alopecia family an opportunity to talk about what it’s like to have this condition, and to inform people about what alopecia actually is. Now about Oscar night: my deepest hope is that these two intelligent, capable men have an opportunity to heal, talk this out, and reconcile. The state of the world today, we need them both and we all actually need one another more than ever. Until then, Will and I are continuing to do what we have done for the last 28 years, and that’s to keep figuring out this thing called life together. Thank you for listening."

The Slap Will Live on in Oscars Night Infamy

     ABC

On March 27th, Chris Rock joked about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair, comparing her to G.I. Jane, unaware of her health problems with alopecia. But, of course, everyone knows what happened next, with her husband, Will Smith, taking to the stage and delivering a slap to Chris Rock’s face. The internet immediately blew up with memes and jokes regarding the incident. However, Jada Pinkett Smith wanted to keep the attention on the issue at hand. She explained during her recent Red Table Talk that she “received so much outrage from people who suffer from alopecia” and “they don’t talk about it because there is so much shame around it.”

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Toward the show’s beginning, Smith focuses on the story of a 12-year-old girl, Rio Allred. In Dec. 2020, Rio’s mom noticed a bald spot on her head, and soon her hair started to fall out by the handful. Allred was diagnosed with alopecia areata; although they “tried creams and painful injections,” nothing seemed to work. At school, Allred was relentlessly teased and bullied, resulting in the child taking her own life. Smith felt it was appropriate to share this story, along with many others, to bring awareness to the illness and move the discussion away from Chris Rock and Will Smith to the source of the problem.