More than three years after that slap made him persona non grata, Will Smith is ready for his revival in Hollywood. The 56-year- old recently released his first album in 20 years, Based on a True Story, which addresses the now infamous moment at the 2022 Oscars and his public cancellation thereafter.
“This was the very, very first time that he wasn’t the good guy, that the internet treated him like the villain,” Omarr Rambert, executive producer of Smith’s album, told the New York Post of the “Slapgate” aftermath. “[Now] he just wants to be vulnerable and honest and show other sides of himself.”
The album is packed full of references to when Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 94th Academy Awards, after the comedian, who was presenting the award for Best Documentary Feature, made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, and her struggle with alopecia. The gobsmacking moment certainly left a sour taste in many fans’ mouths and tainted Smith’s subsequent Best Actor win for sports biopic King Richard.
The fallout was immediate, with the Academy giving Smith a 10-year ban for “unacceptable and harmful behaviour”, and projects like Fast and Loose being cancelled, while others such as Emancipation were delayed. The actor and musician, who had previously had a pretty much unblemished career, was forced to go to ground – only emerging several months later to formally apologise to Rock via a six-minute video on his YouTube and Instagram pages.
“The work I’m trying to do is that I’m deeply remorseful and I’m trying to be remorseful without being ashamed of myself,” he shared at the time. “I’m human. I made a mistake and I’m trying not to think of myself as a piece of sh-t.”
What happened next did little to help his public image, with Pinkett Smith dropping a bombshell when she revealed in her 2023 memoir, Worthy, that she and the actor had decided in 2016 to “separate in every way except legally” – despite publicly maintaining a committed front as a married couple.
During that time, Pinkett Smith had what she called an “entanglement” with singer August Alsina, 32, something that Smith had claimed not to know about during their infamous Red Table Talk interview back in 2020 when the “affair” was revealed. Yet, in her memoir, Pinkett Smith set the record straight. “At this point, Will had been free as a bird for the last four years, living his life on his own terms,” she wrote, saying that Smith “reframed” her relationship with Alsina to appear as though it had “been a secret to him, when that wasn’t true”.
Smith falling out of favour with fans – not to mention his peers in the industry – obviously affected the star. “A lot of people that are not in Will’s position would say, ‘You’re rich and famous.’ [Well,] he’s still a human being,” Rambert shared. “Having to go on hiatus, feeling like people are against you is not fun, especially when you were the good guy.”
Now, three years later, Smith is working hard on his redemption. Last year, he tested the waters with Bad Boys: Ride or Die – the fourth instalment in the action-comedy franchise – which had mixed reviews from critics but was a victory at the box office, raking in more than $630 million worldwide. “The success of Bad Boys really had him like, ‘People love this. Now, I think I can fully, fully express myself,’” Rambert said.
Thus, a new album was born. “I was spending more time by myself in the past three years than ever in my life,” Smith told Sirius XM of how new music came about. “I got in touch with what I call the despicable prisoners, right? The parts of myself that I necessarily didn’t want people to see … Things like fear, you know, things like anger and sadness and confusion.”
The album cuts straight to the chase, with the first song, ‘Int. Barbershop – Day’ opening with the line: “Will Smith is cancelled.” Another verse contains the lyrcis, “Him and Jada both crazy, girl, what you talkin’ about?/You better keep his wife’s name out of your mouth,” referring to Smith telling Rock, “Keep my wife’s name out of your f–king mouth,” after the slap.
And despite revisiting the drama through the lyrics, Smith’s new music is yet another step in what some are calling his carefully choreographed comeback. The day before the album dropped, the star visited his home city of Philadelphia, where the mayor had renamed a street in his honour. Later this year, Smith will also embark on a redemption tour across Europe and the United Kingdom, and he has over a dozen film and television projects currently in the pipeline.
“If you judge every comeback by the depth of the fall, then Smith had a very long climb back into public good graces,” Doug Eldridge, the founder of Achilles PR, a crisis-management specialist in Washington DC told The Guardian. “Very few people were willing to speak up for him for a long while.”
He and Pinkett Smith are also said to be continuing to heal and work on their “life partnership”. They were pictured with their kids, Jaden, 26, and Willow, 24, as well as Trey, 32, who Will shares with ex-wife Sheree Zampino, at the Los Angeles premiere of Bad Boys: Ride Or Die in May last year. They also have continued to support each other from afar.
“I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce – we will work through whatever and I just haven’t been able to break that promise,” Pinkett Smith insisted during a 2023 interview with US Today.
As for the court of public opinion? The tide might be turning for the star, with an insider telling the New York Post that Smith is “back and moving forward”. “People have given him some grace. I don’t see it really negatively impacting him so much anymore,” the insider added. “Everyone deserves a second chance. If he actually was a bad guy, there would be other stories coming out – it would be harder to repent.”
