Vivica Fox: Jada and Will Smith swerved ‘accountability,’ sound self-righteous when talking about the slap

Actress Vivica A. Fox said Jada Pinkett Smith took “no accountability” in the short clip released this week from her Red Table Talk series, when for the first time, she addressed the moment when husband, Will Smith, slapped comedian Chris Rock at the 94th Academy Awards.

As a guest co-host of The Wendy Williams Show on Thursday beside fellow stand-in Carson Kressley, Fox mentioned the clip during the program’s “Hot Topics” segment, saying, “This is going to be difficult for me.”

“These are my peers,” she said. “I’ve done a movie with both of them — Set It Off with Jada and Independence Day with Will Smith, which absolutely changed my life. When I saw this video last night, it made me cry, I’ll be very honest with you guys.”

Fox then began to get to the crux of what troubled her. “I really felt to be a partner to Will Smith, whose career basically took a crumble that night,” she said. “We were all rooting for Will Smith that night — Oscar night — we wanted him to win. Will Smith that night as far as I was concerned was going to be crowned this generation’s Sidney Poitier, which is a huge honor.”

Fox said she believes Pinkett Smith played a role in that moment, as her husband was “defending her honor,” but noted that in Pinkett Smith’s remarks, she saw “no accountability as a partner.” Rock was “assaulted” for “basically telling a joke that I really felt wasn’t that bad,” Fox declared

The actress, People reports, also told Wendy Williams Show viewers that the Oscars broadcast was one of “diversity for brown and black people.” The ceremony was produced by Will Packer (Girls Trip, Think Like a Man films).

“I have love for the Smiths,” she disclosed. “I know their children. I’ve watched them grow up. I just wish we could have just a little more accountability and for it to not seem so self-righteous on Jada’s part. And that’s my feelings.”

In Pinkett Smith’s clip, which was part of Wednesday’s Red Table Talk, the actress-hostess says of Smith and Rock that her “deepest hope is that these two intelligent, capable men have an opportunity to heal, talk this out and reconcile.”

“With the state of the world today, we need ’em both, and we all actually need one another more than ever,” she says. “Until then, Will and I are continuing to do what we have done for the last 28 years — and that’s [to] keep figuring out this thing called life together.”

The slap trended for days on social media; it also elicited numerous articles and think pieces. Smith resigned from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences and has since been banned from Academy events for 10 years.

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