• Will Smith appeared on Show With Trevor Noah.
• The actor has been “away” from the public eye since then.

Will Smith made his first late-night appearance since the Oscars controversy on Show With Trevor Noah.

Smith’s conversation with the late-night host naturally delved into his Oscars night controversy, in which he slapped Chris Rock onstage as the comedian was introducing the category of best documentary feature.

“I have been away,” when the topic of his absence from the public eye came up, Will Smith said, drawing a laugh from the audience, according to sources.

“That was a horrific night, as you can imagine. There’s many nuances and complexities to it. But at the end of the day, I just – I lost it, you know?” Will Smith continued.

“I was going through something that night, you know? Not that that justifies my behaviour at all… It was a lot of things. It was the little boy that watched his father beat up his mother, you know? All of that just bubbled up in that moment. That is not who I want to be.”

Trevor Noah chimed in, offering his own take on the situation and recalling conversations he had with peers about the controversy.

“I love Chris. I’m friends with him. I love you, but this is fucked up… I know that as Black people, Black people get together and go, ‘What was Will doing? What the hell happened?’ A lot of Black people were like, ‘He should go to jail, Like, you need to relax yourself’,” Smith laughed as Trevor Noah.

“Some people were overreacting, which made some people underreact.”

Will Smith shared an anecdote from the evening after the Oscars, when he was already dealing with the consequences of his outburst in his personal life.

“I was gone. That was a rage that had been bottled for a really long time,” Smith said, “My nephew is nine. He is the sweetest little boy.”

“We came home. He had stayed up late to see his uncle Will and we are sitting in my kitchen and he is on my lap and holding the Oscar and he is just like, ‘Why did you hit that man, Uncle Will?’ Damn it. Why are you trying to Oprah me?”

Will Smith also spoke about Emancipation, detailing his decision-making process that led him to the project. Based on true events, the film stars Smith as a runaway slave who becomes known as “Whipped Peter” after photographs of keloid scarring on his back became widely circulated, exposing the extreme brutality of slavery.

“Seeing that image for the first time was one of the things that really got me excited to explore this, because you see the image, but you don’t know who he is or what the story is,” Will Smith explained.

“American slavery was one of the most brutal aspects of human history… It is hard to understand the level of human cruelty. My daughter asked me, daddy, do we really need another slave movie? I said, Daby, ‘I promise you, I wouldn’t make a slave movie. This is a freedom movie’.”

The Aladin star stunned everyone when he slapped Chris Rock during the live broadcast of the 94th Academy Awards.

Everyone at the Oscar’s when Will Smith assaulted Chris Rock on national television #Oscars pic.twitter.com/k42EHWsQuQ

— Akron Pride Custom Tees (@AkronTees2020) March 28, 2022

Chris joked about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, looking like ‘GI Jane 2’ before presenting an award at the Oscars in 2022. This enraged the Aladin star, who stormed the stage, lapping Chris and warning him not to mention his wife’s name in public.

Will Smith did, however, apologizes on social media.

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