A 12 months after Will Smith smacked him on the Academy Awards stage, Chris Rock is poised to finally have his say.
The 58-year-old comic on Saturday evening will carry out his first stand-up special since final 12 months’s Oscars. He is doing it in “Chris Rock: Selective Outrage,” streaming reside on Netflix at 10 p.m. EST. Not solely will Rock current about an hour of stand-up from the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore, however Netflix — in its first ever reside present — will bookend the special with star-studded commentary.
The pre-show, starting at 9:30 p.m., will characteristic Paul McCartney, Jerry Seinfeld, Matthew McConaughey, Cedric the Entertainer, Ice-T and two hosts from final 12 months’s Oscars: Wanda Sykes and Amy Schumer. Afterward Rock’s set, Dana Carvey and David Spade will host visitors together with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Arsenio Corridor and JB Smoove.
Whereas Smith has apologized and repeatedly spoken about the incident since final March, Rock has prevented all the standard platforms the place celebrities typically go to air their emotions. He by no means sat down with Oprah Winfrey, and turned away the various media shops that may have liked to land an unique in-depth interview.
As a substitute, Rock has for a lot of the previous 12 months been touring new materials in an extended string of performances as a part of his Ego Demise tour. The reveals, which had been introduced earlier than the 2022 Oscars, have featured performances with Dave Chappelle and Kevin Hart.
On the highway, Rock has typically labored in jokes and reflections on the slap, although it’s by no means been greater than a component of his reveals. There’s no assure that he’ll discuss it about Saturday evening, however he’s broadly anticipated to and has lengthy advised this could be his chosen discussion board.
Rock first broke his public silence in regards to the slap three nights after the Oscar ceremony, final 12 months in Boston. “How was your weekend?” he requested the gang. He added that he was “nonetheless form of processing what occurred.”
Now, after loads of processing, Rock can be taking the cultural highlight only a week earlier than the March 12 Oscars, the place the slap is bound to revisited by this 12 months’s host, Jimmy Kimmel. Within the aftermath of final 12 months’s occasions, Smith resigned his membership to the film academy. The academy board of governors banned Smith from the Oscars and all different academy occasions for a decade.
At the annual luncheon for nominees held last month, movement image academy president Janet Yang voiced remorse about how the incident was dealt with, calling the academy’s response “insufficient.” Invoice Kramer, the academy’s chief govt, has mentioned the academy has since instituted a disaster communications workforce to put together for and extra quickly reply to the sudden.
“Selective Outrage” is Rock’s second special for Netflix, following 2018’s “Tamborine.” They’re a part of a two-special $40 million deal Rock signed with the streamer in 2016.
Whereas rivals have gotten into reside streaming and sports activities, “Selective Outrage” marks Netflix’s first foray into reside programming. Netflix, with 231 million international subscribers, additionally just lately signed on to stream subsequent 12 months’s Display screen Actors Guild Awards, signaling that “Selective Outrage” could also be simply the beginning of a new pattern.
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Observe AP Movie Author Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
