Now perhaps most famous for including Chris Rock‘s first on-stage comments about his Oscars incident featuring Will Smith, the comedian’s Netflix special is now a record-breaker.
Selective Outage is now the most-streamed comedy special for a single week in Netflix history, beating out the previous record holder Dave Chapelle, bringing in 798 million viewing minutes in a single week.
The special largely hangs on one area of Chris Rock’s life, but it’s a fairly sizeable one—being slapped by Will Smith in front of the world after making a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith.
The actor stormed the stage and slapped Rock across the face, leaving the whole world agog. Smith has since been banned from returning to the Academy Awards for ten years. However, the world was waiting for the quick-witted Rock’s response, and he delivered it in Selective Outrage.
During the special, Rock doesn’t hold back and outlines the incident with background information and even suggests that he reached out to Smith during a particularly tough time for the actor.
According to Rock, the feud between himself and the Smiths went back to the 2016 Oscars, which he also hosted. That year, Pinkett Smith urged a boycott due to a lack of diversity across the nominations. “She fucking said [I] should quit because Will didn’t get nominated for Concussion. What the fuck? So then I do some jokes about it. Who gives a fuck? That’s how it is. She started it. I finished it. Nobody’s picking on this bitch. She started this shit. Nobody was picking on her.”
Rock later changed his tone to assert that he had always been a fan of Smith, which made the incident even harder to swallow. “I love Will Smith, my whole life… he makes great movies,” he said. “I have rooted for Will Smith my whole life. I root for this motherfucker. And now I watch Emancipation just to see him get whooped.”
Asking himself why he didn’t retaliate at the time, Rock joked: “Because I got parents. I was raised. And you know what my parents taught me? Don’t fight in front of white people.”
The huge numbers and wildly successful show will act as some small compensation for the moment that will forever be a part of Rock’s life.
Watch Chris Rock’s Selective Outrage on Netflix now.
