For the past year, the media has been fixated on Will Smith’s on-camera assault of Chris Rock. During this time, Will has made numerous attempts to apologize to Chris, who has remained silent about the incident. Anticipation grew when Chris announced his Netflix special, “Selective Outrage,” as everyone expected him to finally address the slap.
In his special, Chris Rock accuses Will Smith of practicing selective outrage, directing his anger at Chris instead of his wife, who had been unfaithful. “I didn’t have any entanglements,” Chris pointed out. However, there’s an aspect even Chris missed. Will has been revealing his true feelings for years, but no one has pieced it together until now.
There’s an intriguing parallel between the Oscars slap and an incident from Will Smith’s life 31 years earlier. In his memoir, Will shares a story from his youth. When he was 16, he met Melanie Parker, his high school sweetheart, who quickly became the center of his world. “I’ve always needed a woman to achieve for,” he explains, emphasizing how his broken home made him determined to create a different family life.
By age 20, Will had bought a house for them, and they were discussing raising children together. But things took a sharp turn when Will returned from a two-week tour. He sensed something was off with Melanie; her kisses felt more like an obligation than genuine affection. Suspecting she had cheated, he confronted her, and she confessed. Fueled by rage, Will grabbed a fire poker and smashed the windows of her front door. “I went full ghetto hyena,” he recalls.
Even after their breakup, Will couldn’t shake the need to win Melanie back. He planned a grand romantic gesture at her workplace in a downtown Philly mall, imagining a heartfelt reunion. But instead of reconciliation, he found the man she had cheated with. Overcome with fury, Will attacked him in the store. “I charged across the store; he tried to get away, but there was nowhere to hide. I’m all over him. Melanie is screaming, the store is a wreck, and so are his pretty green eyes.”
Eventually, Will and Melanie broke up for good, but his anger persisted. “I collected everything I’d ever bought for her, drenched it all in lighter fluid, and struck the match. Whoosh,” he recounts, describing his final act of destruction.

It’s really unsettling to hear Will recount these stories so casually. He writes that Melanie was a victim during one of the lowest points in his life. He tried for years to make amends and reach out to apologize, but he never managed to get in touch with her. Melanie isn’t a public figure, and no one would have known this story if Will hadn’t shared it in his memoir. By sharing it, he controlled the narrative. However, there was one person he couldn’t control.
“Will, make no mistake, this video is for you directly. The vomit that you spewed—I still reek of it. The one thing I do regret in my life was ever taking that role, to have worked with someone like you.” When he first got the show, he was the king of the set. Will, Alfonso Ribeiro, and everyone else on set talked about how they spent so much time together and really felt like a family—except Janet. Janet Hubert was cast as my Aunt Viv. She was an accomplished actress and dancer who had come to the show from Broadway. “I felt like Janet hated me and hated doing the show.” He was young, out of control, and had all this power. In season four, Janet was replaced. “Janet blamed me. I’ve been banished, and they said it was you who banished me because I didn’t laugh at your jokes.” Will quickly told the press that Janet had been fired because she was difficult. In a radio interview, he said that Janet wanted it to be the Aunt Viv of Bel-Air Show. “They went after me like red meat.” Alfonso Ribeiro, who played Carlton, perpetuated Will’s narrative in his stand-up. “She would literally go off on people.”
Janet had been relentlessly attacking Will for years, taking every chance to criticize him. She even blamed him for her son’s suicide attempt. In 2018, 25 years after she left the show, she told TMZ, “I will never reunite with that [expletive] unless there is an apology, which he doesn’t know the word.” But in 2020, Will finally reached out to apologize during the Fresh Prince 30th Anniversary reunion special. For the first time, Janet shared her experience. “Someone smashed a cookie in my son’s face and said, ‘Your mother is a [expletive].'” “People send me hateful messages on Instagram. ‘Aren’t you dead yet?'” Will admitted that his reaction back then was driven by his need for approval from the women in his life. “I fell back into my family dynamic with my television family. With Janet, I needed Mommy to think I was great, and when I realized she didn’t, my dragon woke up.” Both Will and Janet apologized, but the reconciliation came right after one of the most humiliating times in Will’s life.
Twenty months before the slap, August Alsina revealed to the world that he had an affair with Will’s wife and that Will was okay with it. “I actually sat down with Will. He gave me his blessing.” Will and Jada addressed the situation on “Red Table Talk,” trying to show that their marriage was still strong, but it backfired. “So what happened, Jada?” “You and I were going through a very difficult time.” “Yeah, we decided to separate for a while and find our happiness individually.” “And then what did you do, Jada?” “I got into a different kind of entanglement with August.” Will’s reactions and the term “entanglement” quickly became memes.

Will had spent years being open about his relationships and personal struggles, but this was a story he hadn’t shared. After months of public humiliation and ridicule over Jada’s affair, Will finally snapped, and this time it was on live TV in front of the entire world. “Jada, I love you. ‘GI Jane 2,’ can’t wait to see it.”
Will spent the next year trying every possible way to apologize to Chris. “I apologize. My behavior was unacceptable,” he’d say. Despite his repeated public apologies making it seem like he learned his lesson each time, Will kept falling into the same pattern year after year. Chris’s refusal to accept the apology gave Will a chance to truly change his behavior, as real ownership isn’t about making a show. Apologizing is just the first step; it only matters if you actually correct the behavior you’re sorry for.