Will Smith

Regina Hall Says Will Smith Facing a ‘Difficult Road' After Infamous Oscars Slap

The comedian addressed the now-infamous moment in a recent interview.

Will Smith accepts the Actor in a Leading Role award for ‘King Richard’
Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

Nearly five months after her gig as Oscar co-host was derailed on live television, Regina Hall is moving forward.

During a recent interview with Variety, Hall touched on the awards ceremony, which reached a crescendo last March when Will Smith mounted the stage to slap Chris Rock after he cracked a joke about his wife,  Jada Pinkett Smith.

While at the premiere of “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul,” a comedy mockumentary that also stars actor Sterling K. Brown (“This is Us”), Hall spoke about Smith’s recent apology video. In the video, Smith describes his behavior at the event as “unacceptable” and added that while he had reached out to Rock to apologize personally, he was told he wasn’t ready to talk.

“I think it’s a tough thing, and I know it’s a difficult road,” Hall told Variety about the video. “The first step is he apologized. How people see it, it’s up to them…I know that wasn’t easy.”

Will Smith posted to Instagram Friday to apologize to Chris Rock after slapping the comedian while performing during the 2022 Academy Awards, saying he is “deeply remorseful” for his behavior.

At the time of the slap, Hall had been serving as a co-host with fellow comedians Wanda Sykes and Amy Schumer.

While the concept of co-hosts at the Oscars is far from new, the decision to have three women as hosts was a first. In addition to being accused of stealing the spotlight from the evening’s winners, Smith’s slap was also ridiculed for dimming a momentous moment for Hall, Sykes, and Schumer.

“Everybody was just kind of floored with the whole thing,” Schumer said of the incident in an interview with Andy Cohen one month later. “And I was just thinking, ‘What am I going to do when I go out there?’”

Sykes has also spoken about the incident. During an April interview with Ellen Degeneres, the comedian remarked on how she felt Smith’s actions were a disservice to her, Schumer, and Hall.

“No one has apologized to us, and we worked really hard to put that show together, yeah, so the industry itself, I’m, like, ‘What the hell is this?’” Sykes explained.

Still, the evening’s strange turn of events doesn’t appear to have dissuaded Hall from taking on similar duties in the future. According to Variety, she might be up for the task of hosting the awards sometime in the future.

“I certainly had so much fun,” she said.

This article first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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