With his stand-up tour in New Jersey this weekend, it must have been tempting for Chris Rock to drop by his old stomping grounds to address what went down with Will Smith at the Oscars just six days ago. But instead, it was left to “Weekend Update” co-anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che to come to his defense. And they held nothing back.
“Intelligence officials are saying that Vladimir Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing in Ukraine,” Jost began, misdirecting viewers, “which is kind of like Will Smith’s agent telling him, ‘You crushed it at the Oscars!’”
Jost, who is married to Smith’s fellow A-lister Scarlett Johansson, then joked that the incident “was a disgraceful act that sets a terrible precedent for having to defend your wife at awards shows.”
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“During his acceptance speech Will Smith said, ‘Love will make you do crazy things,’” Che added. “You know what else makes you do crazy things? Crazy! But I understand where Will’s coming from. I mean, you can’t expect him to sit there and watch another man jump all over his wife… without signing an NDA.”
Che was even more pointed when he asked, “Can we stop pretending everybody knew Jada had alopecia? As much as we heard about Jada and Will’s personal lives, you can’t expect us to retain everything. It’s like Kanye saying, ‘Don’t act like y’all didn’t know I had psoriasis.’”
“Just selfishly as a comedian I’m tired of people putting their insecurities on our joke intentions,” he continued. “I mean, I can’t make a joke about it being cold outside without somebody yelling back, ‘Stop making fun of my small penis!’”
And finally, Che highlighted the fact that Chris Rock “has been very public about his non-verbal learning disorder, which means it’s hard for him to understand non-verbal signals.”
“Sort of like how when he saw an angry Will Smith charging toward him,” he explained, “instead of moving out of the way, he put both his hands behind his back, smiled and said, ‘Uh oh.’”
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