Will Smith certainly had a wild ride in Hollywood following his infamous Chris Rock slap, but John Salley claims it ended up being a blessing in disguise.
The actor and former NBA player sat down for an interview with Vlad TV published on Wednesday (May 17), where he opened up about his recent experience filming Bad Boys 4 with Smith and Martin Lawrence. Reflecting on his conversations with the former, Salley said that the superstar’s time away from Hollywood was a much-needed break.
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“After Will did his smack, Will got to travel. Will got to step outside of all this stuff and when he was back he said — best rest he’s ever gotten, best time he got to sit back and look at things,” Salley said. “We share books and he gave me a great book called Awareness and it definitely has changed my way of thinking too.”
He continued: “When you start realizing everything that happens is like the butterfly effect. Everything ripples down to something else and it was him having to get out of it. I always looked at it when I watched the smack — it seemed like he didn’t wanna do it but he was already committed. Because he was leaning back like he was fighting something.”
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He later added that he felt it was a blessing that “people got to see that [Smith] was human.” He also noted the fact Will Smith is no longer in The Academy and thus can no longer win Oscars takes the stress away, saying: “Now you can just make movies because you love to make movies.”
Check out John Salley’s interview below:
Bad Boys 4 is the second film Smith has worked on in the wake of his notorious slap at the 2022 Academy Awards. He previously starred in 2022’s Emancipation.
Rock recently touched on the moment in his latest Netflix special, Selective Outrage – a little over one year removed from the incident.
“Y’all know what happened to me, getting smacked by Suge Smith,” Rock said. “Everybody knows. Everybody fucking knows. Yes. It happened: Like a year ago, I got smacked at the fucking Oscars by this muthafucka.”
He continued: “I watch Emancipation just to see him get whooped,” adding later that, “Will Smith practices selective outrage. Everyone that really knows knows I didn’t have anything to do with that shit. I didn’t have any ‘entanglements.’”
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Meanwhile, Will Smith found himself having a proud dad moment at Coachella this year watching his two youngest children, Willow and Jaden Smith, perform.
In April, the Fresh Prince took to Instagram to share footage of Willow’s Coachella set from the weekend. “WILLOWCHELLA!!” he captioned the post, which sees Will grinning from ear to ear as he watches his daughter perform.
