Jada Pinkett Smith Says Chris Rock Asked Her Out Amid Will Smith Divorce Rumors

When Will Smith publicly apologized for slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars 2022, he said that there were "many nuances and complexities" to the situation. Jada Pinkett Smith may have shed some light on those details in an interview with PEOPLE on Wednesday. She revealed that at one point, Rock actually asked her out on a date.

Jada has dropped a lot of bombshells this week in interviews promoting her new memoir Worthy, which will be available on Oct. 17. For one thing, she told Today that she and Will have actually been separated since 2016 and living in different homes. However, she acknowledged that this wasn't too surprising – there have been plenty of rumors about her and Will splitting up over the years. When one of those reports was circulating – she didn't say when – Rock called to ask her out on a date.

"I think every summer all the reports would come out that me and Will were getting a divorce," she said. "And this particular summer, Chris, he thought that we were getting a divorce. So he called me and basically he was like, 'I'd love to take you out.' And I was like, 'What do you mean?' He was like, 'Well, aren't you and Will getting a divorce?' I was like, 'No. Chris, those are just rumors.' He was appalled. And he profusely apologized and that was that."

There's no telling how a misunderstanding like that may have rippled through the relationships between Will, Jada and Rock in the years that followed. Jada pointed to some other meaningful moments between them as well – when she condemned Rock for hosting the 2016 Oscars, for one thing, and some rough patch that she believes Will and Rock had in the 1980s. Of course, the slapping incident at the Oscars also involved a misunderstanding as Rock cracked a joke about Jada's baldness without realizing she was suffering from Alopecia.

Will may or may not have been referring to any of those factors when he addressed the slap on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah in November of 2022. He said: "That was a horrific night, as you can imagine. There are many nuances and complexities to it. But, at the end of the day, I lost it, and I guess what I would say, you just never know what somebody's going through, you know?"

"I was going through something that night," he went on. "Not that that justifies my behavior at all. You're asking, what did I learn? It's that we've just gotta be nice to each other, man. It's hard. I guess the thing that was most painful for me is, I took my hard and made it hard for other people. I understood the idea of when they say hurt people hurt people."

Fans will undoubtedly be looking for more details in Jada's book Worthy, which will be available next week. So far, Rock has not responded publicly to her latest comments.