Terry Crews has said that Chris Rock “saved Hollywood” with his reaction to the Will Smith slap at the Oscars.
Crews also praised Rock for the way he held “everything together” following the incident.
Scroll on to find out what else he said…
Now, Will Smith has been through a hell of a lot over the last few years…
Particularly when it comes to his personal life.
As we know, things kicked off for Will when Jada Pinkett Smith’s alleged affair thrust the pair into the spotlight.
For years now, rumors of infidelity between her and her husband, Will Smith, have been rife… But a whole new rumor emerged.
Reports had been alleging eye-opening new details about the pair’s marriage…
And shockingly the situation continued to develop as Will also admitted that he “cheated” on his wife.
The couple initially met all the way back in 1994.
Jada was only nineteen when she auditioned to play the role of Will’s girlfriend in the hit sitcom, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
But the pair hit it off right away.
At 6’2, Will towers over Jada, who is only 5′. But from the audition, Will and Jada built a friendship that soon turned into a romance.
Though Will was married to Sheree Fletcher at the time when they met…
In an interview with Access, Jada admitted that Will was still technically married when they started dating. “He was ‘div’,” she said. “The ‘orced’ hadn’t happened yet.” Will and Sheree divorced in 1995 and they continued to share custody of their son, Trey.
It didn’t take long for Will to make his moves on Jada…
Upon the breakdown of his marriage, Will had asked Jada if she was “seeing anyone,” and her response was “no.” “Cool, you’re seeing me now,” Will had smoothly told her.
They appeared to be the perfect couple…
And, just 2 years later in 1997, Will and Jada had tied the knot in a private ceremony at the Cloisters Mansion in Jada’s hometown of Baltimore.
It wasn’t long after they announced Jada was pregnant with their first child…
Jaden, who is twenty-three, was born a year after they married, followed by Willow, who is twenty-one.
Both Jaden and Willow have embarked on careers as musicians since they were teenagers and they’re now proving to be very popular, particularly in the hip-hop and rap scene.
The Smiths seem like the perfect family…
But nothing is ever as perfect as it seems, right?
And sadly that seems to be the case for Jada and Will…
In 2013, fans went wild when Jada allegedly hinted that she and Will were in an open relationship.
During a HuffPost Live Interview back in 2013, Jada confirmed the rumors…
“I’ve always told Will, ‘You can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be okay.’ Because, at the end of the day, Will is his own man. I’m here as his partner, but he is his own man. He has to decide who he wants to be and that’s not for me to do for him. Or vice versa.”
Taking to Facebook shortly after the interview, Jada opened her post with the question, “Open marriage?…”
She then explained: “The statement I made in regard to, ‘Will can do whatever he wants,’ has illuminated the need to discuss the relationship between trust and love and how they co-exist.”
On TIDAL’s Rap Radar podcast in 2018, Will also opened up about their marriage…
He said: “We don’t even say we’re married anymore. We refer to ourselves as ‘life partners,’ where you get into that space where you realize you are literally with somebody for the rest of your life. There are no deal-breakers. There’s nothing she could do – ever – nothing that would break our relationship.”
This solidified rumors about the couple’s unique relationship.
However, shortly after, a whole new spanner was thrown into the works.
In 2020, singer August Alsina came forward with some pretty eye-opening claims about Jada…
He had hinted strongly that he had engaged in a consensual relationship with Jada in his song “Nunya.”
And, to make this story even more scandalous…
He alleged that the relationship, which spanned over several years, “was approved by her husband Will.” What?
In an interview with The Breakfast Club’s Angela Yee, August said…
“I actually sat down with Will and had a conversation. Due to the transformation from their marriage to their life partnership that they spoken on several times, and not involving romanticism, he gave me his blessing.”
He continued…
“I totally gave myself to that relationship for years of my life. I truly and really, really deeply loved, and have a ton of love for her. I devoted myself to it, I gave my full self to it. So much so to the point that I can die right now and be OK with knowing that I truly gave myself to somebody,” he said.
He concluded…
“I really loved the person that I experienced that [with] and know what [that feels] like – if some people never get that in this lifetime.”
After August’s controversial comments…
Jada took to The Red Table to discuss the issue.
Okay, anyone who is familiar with the Smith family will be aware of their infamous Red Table.
Jada, alongside her daughter, Willow, hosts her own online chat show, Red Table Talk, where people sit around a red table, or sometimes on a red couch, and talk candidly about their own personal issues and experiences.
The full Smith family has appeared on Red Table Talk several times before…
And Will and Jada have candidly talked about their own relationship and family life.
But in this particular episode, she confessed it all…
And, just months later, Will Smith also made some admissions of his own…
In a cover story with GQ Magazine in September 2021, the actor confessed that he also had other s*xual relations during his marriage to Jada.
“Jada never believed in conventional marriage… Jada had family members that had an unconventional relationship,” he said. “So she grew up in a way that was very different than how I grew up. There were significant endless discussions about, what is relational perfection? What is the perfect way to interact as a couple? And for the large part of our relationship, monogamy was what we chose, not thinking of monogamy as the only relational perfection.”
He continued: “The pursuit of truth is the only way to be happy in this lifetime and we sort of came to the agreement that authenticity was the release from the shackles of fame and public scrutiny.”
The author of the GQ piece revealed that Will explained to them, that Jada wasn’t the only one that was “unfaithful” but didn’t elaborate on the details.
“We have given each other trust and freedom, with the belief that everybody has to find their own way,” Will told the publication.
“And marriage for us can’t be a prison. And I don’t suggest our road for anybody. I don’t suggest this road for anybody. But the experiences that the freedoms that we’ve given one another and the unconditional support, to me, is the highest definition of love,” he added.
And the Smith family was once again thrown into the spotlight after the events that unfolded during this year’s Oscars.
When Will punched Chris Rock on stage after he made a joke about Jada.
It’s safe to say, it was an event that got everyone talking for weeks.
And despite Smith’s controversial actions, many celebrities came out in support of him including, more recently, Terry Crews…
Weeks on from the incident, Terry Crews has shown support for Smith after the slap.
Crews discussed the incident in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter where he called both Smith and Rock his “dear friends.”
“Both Will Smith and Chris Rock are dear, dear friends of mine,” Crews began telling the outlet.
“I love them both as brothers, but there was a time in my life [where] I was Will Smith at that moment, and let me tell you, I’ve done worse than Will.”
Crews went on to say that when he had been in similar situations, “people were like, ‘What in the world are you doing?’ My wife even had to be like, ‘You got to promise me you will never go off like this.’
“The minute I did it, I regretted it,” he said. “I was like, ‘Why did I do this?’ I couldn’t control myself. I literally had no control. If the wind went right, I was going right. If the wind went left, I was going left.”
Crews then went on to praise the way Rock handled the situation as he said: “When I look back, by what Chris did, by just deciding to hold everything together, it actually, I think in a lot of ways saved Hollywood.”
“Because if there would’ve been a brawl on that stage, I don’t know if Hollywood would’ve ever gotten any respect again, you know? It’s hard to even imagine what would’ve happened.”
Crews went on to add that “the definition of toughness” that he knew growing up “was always the ability to strike, the ability to punch, the ability to set things straight, to even the score.”
However, he now knows that the “true definition of toughness was what Chris did in taking a punch and then holding everything together and then showing tremendous endurance and resilience in the middle of obstacles.”
“I think it was a miracle what Chris did,” he added. “I really do. I couldn’t believe his poise in that moment. I thought, holy cow, we owe him a lot.”
“I’m very thankful to Chris, but also I understand Will. I’m not [one] to demonize Will at all because I was there.”
Crews also discussed that choosing to act as Rock had acted on that stage was better than losing control.
“It wasn’t until I was Chris Rock literally at that moment — when I was assaulted by agent Adam Venit — and I chose to be in control. I chose to hold everything together. It could have descended into chaos,” he said, as per Yahoo.
“It would’ve been the end of me,” he continued.
“The time that I was Chris was the time that saved my life,” he said.
Crews came out in 2017 about a 2016 assault carried out by the head of the motion picture department at William Morris Endeavor, Adam Venit, as per ABC News.
“Back in February 2016, I was assaulted by Adam Venit, who is head of the motion picture department at William Morris Endeavor, one of the biggest agencies in the world, period,” he had said on Good Morning America, as per the news outlet.
Venit was reportedly sticking his tongue out at the Brooklyn 99 actor, and it made him uncomfortable. “I’m looking like, ‘Is this a joke?’ … It was actually so bizarre,” Crews continued explaining as he described how Venit acted while at a party Crews was at with his wife in 2016.
But, that wasn’t all he endured…
“He comes over to me. I stick my hand out, and he literally takes his hand and puts it, and squeezes my genitals. I jump back like, ‘Hey, hey.’
“And he’s still licking his tongue out and all this stuff, and I go, ‘Dude, what are you doing? What are you doing?’ and then he comes back again. He just won’t stop,” Crews continued, telling Good Morning America that he then pushed him away.
And then, Crews details remembering what his wife had told him the last time he had lashed out, which is why he acted so differently.
“If I would have just retaliated in defense, I would be under the jail right now. That’s one thing I knew, that being a large African-American man in America, I would immediately be seen as a thug,” he said.
And so, coming back to his present-day mindset, Crews said to The Hollywood Reporter that “you had to see where I was to understand where I am now.”
“I have people now that can’t even imagine the things I did … and I’m like, ‘Hey man, that was me. And I have to let you know.’
“And this is the same place I feel Will is in, and because people still are trying hard to rectify the Will Smith they knew with that person that was there at the Academy Awards, but he’s the same person, you know what I mean?
“We all have to understand that that could be any of us,” he finished.
What do you think about his comments?