Rock told an audience in Phoenix, Arizona, that hosting the Oscars again would be like asking Nicole Brown Simpson “to go back to the restaurant” where she left a pair of glasses the night she was stabbed to death in 1994, reported The Arizona Republic.
During a performance at the Arizona Financial Theatre in Phoenix on Sunday, Rock referred to one of the key details of the O.J. Simpson trial, the paper reported. The high-profile trial ended in 1995 with a jury acquitting the broadcaster, actor and NFL Hall of Fame running back of murder in the slaying of his ex-wife and her friend Ronald Goldman. The trial also highlighted issues of domestic-partner violence.
On June 12, 1994, the last night of Brown Simpson’s life, she had dinner with family at an Italian restaurant. After arriving home, she called the restaurant when she realized she lost her prescription sunglasses, which were quickly found outside the main entrance. Goldman heard about the call and offered to take the glasses to her home. The two were later found dead, feet away from each other, outside Brown Simpson’s house.
“Chris Rock is now trivializing intimate-partner and gender-based violence,” said Oni Blackstock, executive director of anti-racist advocacy group Health Justice. “He got slapped. She got murdered. There’s no comparison.”
Twitter user 𝓣𝓸𝓶. said in a tweet, “yeah it’s a tasteless/sort of misogynistic joke three decades out of date, but it also doesn’t make any sense, since this alternate version of events would result in both victims being where OJ wasn’t.”
At the 2022 Academy Awards on March 30, Rock, the host, was slapped by Smith on live television after Rock made a joke about the buzzcut of Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who has alopecia. Rock’s quip referred to the starring role in the film G.I. Jane.
Since the slap, Smith has lost social media followers, resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and received a 10-year ban from all Oscar-related events for “unacceptable and harmful behavior.” Smith has also apologized to Rock.
“He’s bigger than me,” Rock joked during his performance in Phoenix, reported the Republic. “The state of Nevada would not sanction a fight between me and Will Smith.”
Atima Omara, political strategist and writer, tweeted, “Chris Rock REALLY could have left it at: ‘I’m not hosting the Oscars next year’ and kept it moving.”
“At this point, if you find yourself defending Chris Rock, your brain and his last name share something in common,” Preston Mitchum, director of advocacy and government affairs at LGBTQ suicide-prevention group The Trevor Project, said in a tweet.
Newsweek has reached out to Rock’s publicist for comment.
