Will Smith’s ‘Daily Show’ Interview: Oscars Were “Horrific” for Him, Admits He “Lost It” Slapping Chris Rock

Will Smith got a very warm and forgiving welcome on The Daily Show last night (Nov. 28), where he made his late night return months after shocking the world by slapping Chris Rock on the live Oscars telecast over a joke made about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

While Smith appeared on Trevor Noah‘s show to promote his upcoming Apple TV+ drama Emancipation, his appearance quickly shifted into another stop on his apology tour as he told the host, “hurt people hurt people,” and admitted he “lost it” when he stormed the Oscars stage.

Smith described the night of March 27, when he slapped Rock, as “horrific,” telling Noah, “There’s many nuances and complexities to it. But at the end of the day, I just, I lost it, you know?”

“I guess what I would say — you just never know what somebody’s going through,” he said, before gesturing to the audience and saying someone could be sitting next to another person in the crowd whose mother just died or whose child fell ill, and they wouldn’t know it.

“I was going through something that night, you know? Not that that justifies my behavior at all. … We just gotta be nice to each other man, you know? It’s like, it’s hard,” Smith said, adding, “I understand the idea that hurt people hurt people.”

Noah appeared to be firmly on Team Smith, sympathizing with the actor and condemning the “relentlessly shitty” comments directed at him and his family since the incident. When Smith said everything from his past “bubbled up” when he slapped Rock and made him “not who I want to be,” Noah immediately stepped in to say, “I think it’s not who you are.”

“I think everybody can make a mistake,” Noah told his guest, which brought Smith to tears as the studio audience cheered. Noah also accused some people of “overreacting” to the moment and laughed off suggestions that Smith should have “gone to jail” over the slap.

Smith said he understood why people were shocked in the moment, and admitted he was “gone” when he struck Rock, explaining, “That was a rage that had been bottled for a really long time.”

Smith’s softball Daily Show interview concluded with Noah telling him that the Oscars slap should not “define” him, adding, “I don’t think any one of us in life deserves to be defined by our fuck-up.”

The actor replied that he had to “forgive myself for being human,” insisting, “there’s nobody that hates the fact that I’m human more than me.”

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central. Watch Smith’s full interview with Noah in the video above.