Jada Pinkett Smith Says Chris Rock’s Oscars Crack ‘Comes With the Territory’

By Sameer Rao Mar 07, 2016

Chris Rock‘s opening monologue at this year’s #OscarsSoWhite stirred tremendous controversy—not least of all because of how the host targeted Jada Pinkett Smith‘s boycott of the ceremony. Rock’s joke: "Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties—I wasn’t invited."

As Colorlines’ editorial director Akiba Solomon wrote

Rock spending all that oxygen on Pinkett Smith was sexist. She wasn’t the one who told him to quit his hosting gig; Tyrese Gibson and 50 Cent did thatBoycotter Spike Lee said essentially the same thing about Rock as Pinkett Smith did, that he was a friend whom he wished well. But somehow a woman stating the obvious—that the Oscars have a race problem—was just about her caping for her husband? Stop it.

Pinkett Smith offered her own response to the joke. People and Entertainment Weekly picked up a video from celebrity news tabloid x17online.com, which caught up with Pinkett Smith at an airport. She responded to a query about Rock by saying, "It comes with the territory, sweetheart," and that "We got to keep it moving, there’s a lot of stuff we got to handle, a lot of stuff in our world right now."

(H/t x17online.com, People, Entertainment Weekly)