More than a year has passed since the debacle at the 2022 Academy Awards when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage after the comedian made comments about Jada Pinkett Smith. It was the talk of Tinseltown for quite a while, with an unsurprising resurgence after the 2023 Academy Awards with Jimmy Kimmel hosting and Chris Rock’s Netflix comedy special earlier this year. Now, The Masked Singer host Nick Cannon has brought the incident up again in relation to the cancellation of Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talk show.
Red Table Talk ran for five seasons as a talk show hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith, daughter Willow, and mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris. News that the program had been cancelled broke on April 26, when Deadline announced that all Facebook Watch Originals would not return for more seasons. Production company Westbrook Studios is reportedly shopping Red Table Talk around for a new home, but Nick Cannon wasted no time in commenting on the cancellation and how he sees it related to the Will Smith/Chris Rock incident.
Nick Cannon, who hosted his own talk show for less than a year before ending in early 2022, now hosts a radio show called The Daily Cannon. He shared his thoughts on Red Table Talk’s cancellation in no uncertain terms, saying (via Instagram):
Good. If there was no Red Table Talk, then he wouldn’t have slapped the shit out of Chris Rock… I’m talking about that toxic table. Too much honesty can get your ass slapped in the face. We’ve seen this… That table was toxic. They made all them memes about my brother Will on that damn table. They didn’t need to do that.
The Daily Cannon host didn’t get into specifics, but memes of Will Smith getting emotional on an episode of Red Table Talk over Jada Pinkett Smith’s “entanglement" (which he also discussed elsewhere) went viral in the aftermath, and images from that conversation continue to be used on social media. Cannon went on to say that Will and Jada were “royalty” before that episode of the show, which in his opinion ultimately led to Chris Rock being slapped at the Oscars last year.
That incident was not addressed on Red Table Talk for some time, with the explanation in April 2022 that the family was “focusing on deep healing.” At the time of writing, neither Will Smith nor Jada Pinkett Smith have publicly responded to Nick Cannon’s comments. The Bad Boys star (who recently gave a filming update on Bad Boys 4) did, however, seemingly poke fun at the enduring controversy about the slap back in February via TikTok.
Nick Cannon certainly didn’t seem to be kidding when he gave his opinion on how Will Smith’s Red Table Talk appearance ultimately led to Smith slapping Chris Rock, however. Take a look at The Daily Cannon clip:
Chris Rock has also not publicly reacted to Nick Cannon's comments. Given all of the commentary on the slap over the months since the 2022 Academy Awards, it's entirely possible that none of the parties involved are going to engage any further. For now, those still invested in the situation can decide whether or not they agree with Cannon about Red Table Talk's cancellation and the incident at the Oscars last year.
