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When you think of Will Smith, what do you think of? His iconic trio of 90s action films in Bad Boys, Independence Day, and Men In Black? Or maybe his early 2000s stuff like Ali, Hitch, and I Am Legend. There’s also his Academy Award-winning performance in King Richard — that could be top of this list, too.
Or, do you think about him slapping Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars? While the headline of this article likely implanted that image in your mind before you even got to this sentence, the point remains: these days, when you think of Will Smith, you think of “The Slap.”
This is the crux of a discussion that Adam Sandler recently had with Joe Rogan on his podcast, in which Rogan said that Smith is now primarily known for that infamous lowlight and not his body of cinematic work.
“What a f—— weird moment,” Sandler — who most recently was filming a Noah Baumbach movie with George Clooney and Laura Dern — said on the August 13 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.
“It’s like a guy just showing his a–… like, why did you do that?” Rogan replied. “He probably wakes up in the middle of the night going, ‘Why did I do that?’”
“In everybody’s mind when you see Will Smith, ‘Oh, he slapped Chris Rock.’ Not I Am Legend, not Muhammad Ali, not insanely good movies. Guy’s an incredible actor. He’s been in so many banger movies. He’s a f—— blockbuster movie star. And when people see him, they go, ‘Oh, he slapped Chris Rock,’” the controversial podcast host and UFC commentator said.
Joe Rogan: ‘These People Are F**kers; They Didn’t Protect Chris Rock’
Joe Rogan goes off on The Oscars about Will Smith’s slap on Chris Rock and how it impacted Rock’s career.
“… the whole thing was preposterous… I think for him, it was also a wake up call, like, hey, these… pic.twitter.com/ep1N5QfVaP
— UngaTheGreat (@UngaTheGreat) August 14, 2024
Rogan also said that for as much as The Slap Smith, it helped Chris Rock as it allowed his subsequent standup special to be “wild and outrageous again.” The standup special that Rogan is referencing is Chris Rock: Selective Outrage, which was live-streamed on Netflix in 2023.
Despite Rogan’s analysis, Smith has recently proved that he can still open a movie — albeit one that’s franchise IP — as Bad Boys: Ride or Die, his first theatrically-released film since The Slap, has earned over $400 million at the global box office since hitting theaters on June 7.