Leslie Jones Says Will Smith Oscars Slap 'Really Affected' Chris Rock: It Was 'Humiliating' (Exclusive)

The comedian and ‘SNL’ alum says she wanted to run to her longtime friend’s defense while watching the debacle at the 2022 Oscars.

If you ask Leslie Jones, friends don’t let friends get trashed at awards shows.

“It really pissed me off,” Jones, 56, tells PEOPLE as she watched from home as Will Smith slapped her close friend Chris Rock, 58, during the 2022 Oscars. “You don’t know I was going to jump in the car and roll over there. I was so freaking mad on so many levels.”

In the star’s new memoir, Leslie Fucking Jonesout on September 19, chronicles her first meeting with Rock in the mid-’90s and how, over the years, as she struggled to find her footing on the standup comedy circuit, they formed a strong bond.

“He’s like a brother to me,” Jones says of the star who threw his name in the ring for Saturday night live back in 2013 and convinced her to audition. “I was like, ‘Why, those aren’t real comics,'” she recalls of the questioning SNL. “He said, ‘Shut up. You sound like an idiot’.”

Chris Rock, Leslie Jones.

Michael Simon/startraksphoto.com

Rock wrote the foreword for her new book. Jones says, “He’s always there to give me the perfect advice when I need it.”

But in March 2022, she recalls wanting to be there for him in his time of need. “I was just angry for a long time,” she says of the shocking slap. “Chris Rock made a fucking joke.” She adds, “And I know Will… I was like, you couldn’t handle that s–t after. This is the Oscars. The whole world is watching.”

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Talking to Rock about the incident, “I was like, ‘Chris, when he got up why didn’t you run?'” she says. I’d be running around that stage like, “Will, calm down. Jada, call your man!'”

Chris Rock, Will Smith.

When it comes to the consequences of that moment, she wishes it had played out differently. “He could have fixed it more,” says Smith’s Jones, who returned to the stage shortly afterward for his best actor acceptance speech. If it were up to her, the star would say: “‘I shouldn’t have done that. Take Chris out. I can’t accept the Oscar right now because it was so fucking wrong.'”

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As a close friend of Rock’s, Jones says the ordeal took a toll on him that few are aware of. “That s–t was humiliating. It really hit him,” she says. “People have to understand that his daughters, his parents, saw it. He had to go to counseling with his daughters.”

Chris Rock. Kirill Bichutsky/Netflix

One positive aspect, she says, came out of it all: Rock brought his pain back to the stage. “Everybody got mad about him doing a special. That’s what comedians do,” she says of his Selective rage standup special that debuted on Netflix last March. “Instead of freaking out we fucking talk about it on a fucking stage. Thank God we have a stage.”

For more on Jones’ raw new memoir and fascinating journey to fame, check out this week’s issue of PEOPLE, out Friday.

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