After Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock on the Oscars stage today for a joke on his wife actor Jada Pinkett Smith, many on Twitter said the presenter’s comments were in poor taste as she suffers from alopecia.
For the unversed, Rock joked about Jada Pinkett Smith starring in G.I. Jane II for her closely shaved head. In the 1997 movie “G.I. Jane”, Demi Moore had played the titular character who shaved her head as a Navy seal in a total transformation.
Pinkett Smith has opened up about her struggle with alopecia areata that prompted her to shave her head eventually. She revealed her diagnosis in 2018 at the Red Table Talk series where she said it "was terrifying" to deal with in the beginning. Alopecia areata is condition causes severe hair loss when the body’s immune system attacks hair follicles.
Last year in July, Pinkett Smith had shaved her hair off and said in a post that her daughter Willow Smith urged her to do it.
“Willow made me do it because it was time to let go BUT … my 50’s are bout to be Divinely lit with this shed,” she had said in an Instagram post.
Last December, she shared a video saying that a chunk of hair had fallen out leaving a bare line on her scalp. She added that the line would be difficult to hide and hence wanted to show everyone in the clip and be open about it.
“You know at this point I can only laugh. And you all know I have been struggling with alopecia and just all of a sudden one day… look at this line right here… So it just showed up like that and its going be a little bit more difficult for me to hide so I thought I’d just share it, so you all aren’t asking any questions. You know mama’s going to put some rhinestones in there. I’m just going to make me a little crown. That’s what Mama’s going to do,” she said in the 40-second clip, smiling.
“Mama’s gonna have to take it down to the scalp so nobody thinks she got brain surgery or something. Me and this alopecia are going to be friends… period!” she captioned the video. After this, she likely cropped her hair shorter down to the scalp that prompted the poor joke from Rock at the Academy Awards today.
She has joked about her condition in the past.
The Academy, in a tweet, said it didn’t condone “violence of any form” without taking any names. Will Smith won the Best Actor trophy after the controversy where he apologized to the Academy. After striking Rock in a sudden move that stunned the audience and the world, Smith went back and said, “Keep my wife’s name out your f***ing mouth,” twice.
A flabbergasted Chris Rock then continued to announce the nominees for the Best Documentary Film.
The Academy interrupted the broadcast but audiences in other countries apart from the US got to see the whole episode uncensored.
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