Jada Pinkett Smith Says Chris Rock Asked Her Out on a Date amid Rumors She and Will Were Divorcing (Exclusive)

Jada Pinkett Smith hasn’t spoken to Chris Rock since the Oscars incident, but she hopes everyone involved can find “peace.”

The actress, whose book it is Worthy out Oct. 17, tells PEOPLE in a candid new interview that “no, I haven’t talked to Chris” since March 27, 2022, when her husband Will Smith punched him onstage at the Oscars after he threw a fit over a joke about Jada.

“[Do I have] Do you want to talk to Chris? Here is my wish: I just hope that all the misunderstandings about this can be clarified and that there will be peace,” she adds.

“I talk about it in the book, I think there might be a misunderstanding between Chris and I regarding the Oscars in 2016. I think he might have taken offense, which I didn’t mean to offend. That was not my intention. But I think there is a big misunderstanding,” says Jada, 52.

Back in 2016, when Will was overlooked for his Earthquake performance and acting nominations did not recognize actors of color, Jada was a vocal supporter of the #OscarsSoWhite movement, calling for a boycott of the awards.

Chris, who was the host that year, joked about Jade in his monologue. And in his comedy special on Netflix earlier this year, Chris claimed that Jada told him he should quit hosting out of solidarity.

Jada admits that she “doesn’t really recognize the level of pressure [Chris] may have been under” at the time.

Jada Pinkett Smith.

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I probably should have called him and said, ‘Hey, are you okay? And just know that even though I’m open about the Oscars, I wish you the best and I just want you to know that,’ I took the time to call him and say that, just to touch. But his feelings may have been hurt,” she says.

But, Jada adds, “All we can do is just look at our side and see where I could have done something that would seem like… Whatever misunderstanding could have been created, what could I have done to avoid that misunderstanding? The only thing about I’m thinking about that call.”

Jada says Chris, 58, called her after that in 2016 and she thought they had moved on.

“He apologized and I also apologized to him,” she says. “I actually thought we were good, that the hatchet was buried between us. And we haven’t spoken since then, until 2022 came.

Immediately after the slap, Jada says Chris came off the stage to talk to her during a break in the live broadcast, where he was presenting an award.

“Chris came down to the end of the stage and tried to apologize to me. He said, ‘I meant you no harm.’ I said, ‘I can’t talk about that now, Chris. This is some old s…’ I thought this was it [about] Oscar 2016 and … their stuff they had before I even came on the scene in the late 80’s. I have to leave it up to Will and Chris to talk about it, but they certainly got theirs.”

Was Jada, who lives with alopecia, offended by the joke at the center of the Oscars incident, Chris making a point about her shaved head?

“I mean, that’s what comedians do,” Jada says. “I would just have to say that I’m not really here to pass any judgment on how people choose to express themselves and express their art. I will say that I have been hurt a few times, for sure. Chris hurt me a lot. But at the end of the day, also, being in the spotlight comes with the territory.”

Jada also reveals in her book that Chris once asked her out.

Explaining more to PEOPLE, she says, “I think every summer all the reports would come out that me and Will were getting divorced. And this summer, Chris, he thought we were going to divorce. So he called me and basically said, ‘I’d like to take you out.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Well, aren’t you and Will going to get a divorce?’ I said, ‘No. Chris, it’s just a rumour.’ He was disgusted. And he apologized profusely and that was it.”

A rep for Chris did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

In an interview with Today on Wednesday, Jada revealed to Hoda Kotb that she and Will have been separated for seven years. Jada confirmed that it wasn’t a “divorce on paper,” as Kotb put it, but “by the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted trying.”

“I think we both of them are somehow still stuck in our imagination of what we thought the other person should be,” she told a television reporter.

The Run it the actress also said she “promised that there would never be a reason for us to divorce,” explaining, “We’re going to work on… whatever.”

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Meanwhile, Will (55) apologized for the incident with the Oscars and resigned from the Academy, which banned him from attending its events for 10 years.

Looking back on that night, Jada says that at first she “thought it was a skit” and it took her a second to realize what had happened.

“From where I was sitting, I couldn’t tell. It didn’t look like Will hit Chris because, number one, I’ve seen Will in a boxing ring with professional fighters – Will is a heavy hitter. So when Chris moved, it looked like he ducked or missed the shot. And when he kept standing, and then when he kept walking down to the end of the stage, I said, ‘No way. There’s no way Will hit him.’ ”

She adds: “It wasn’t until Will started walking back to his chair that I realized it wasn’t a skit. I was in the same fog as anyone else in that room that night.”

Jada remembers trying to “keep grounded and calm for the people around us, especially Will” in the immediate aftermath. The first thing she said to Will after that was, “Are you okay?”

“I wasn’t really sure what was going on. I just knew, one thing I’ve learned from everything I’ve been through is to stay calm, stay clear. Just so you can stay aware of what’s going on around you.”

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Jada says that because of her “own path of self-esteem,” she finds a way to support Will while letting him chart his own path.

“For many years, I took on a lot of responsibility, thinking that I was responsible for many things that were simply not my responsibility. Part of my codependency,” she says.

“I will be by his side, but also allow him to figure this out on his own. [I’m] finding ways to support him without trying to take it away from him or solve it for him, what he has to be with.”

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