Will Smith’s baldness joke about bassist goes viral. bass responds

bass player John B Williams He vividly remembers the moment over 30 years ago when will Smith He referred to him during an episode of The Arsenio Hall Show And he joked about his bald head.

“I didn’t take it seriously. It was a comedy. He was the new Prince of Bel-Air. He was a rapper. I took it as a joke. I laughed,” said Williams, 81. rolling rock In his first interview since a clip from the 1991 exchange began going viral. “It was a show. That was great. It didn’t bother me at all.”

Then he said that what happened Sunday night was different, and he could “empathize” with Smith.

Williams, who played in Posey’s band at Arsenio Hall’s home, was reminded of the 1991 exchange when his grandson showed him the video that came out on Monday. The clip began to explode in the wake of Smith’s storming of the Oscars theater on Sunday night and Chris Rock slapped his face Because the comedian has compared Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, to J.I. Jane, a film character with a buzzing voice played by Demi Moore.

Pinkett Smith has been open about her struggle with alopecia, a medical condition that causes hair loss that disproportionately affects black women. It’s not clear if Rock knows this. “Jada, I love you. Ji Jin 2Rock said from the stage.

In a joke more than three decades ago, Smith targeted Williams’ bald head. “The bass player? He got a rule. He had to wax his head every morning. That’s a rule! He follows the rules, man.” Smith says in The clip was discovered and posted on Twitter By handle userPeter_OKH

“He should wax his head every morning.” Now this is a video of Will Smith telling a joke about someone with alopecia areata.

One of the reasons I love the Internet, is that it is never forgotten. pic.twitter.com/4OGlgSrcjA

– Three Crosses (@Peter_OKH) March 28, 2022

When Smith made the joke, the camera cut to Williams, who smiled, laughed and nodded in amusement. When some members of the audience seemed to groan, Smith replied, “Oh, those are jokes. Come on!”

Williams says the two jokes – one made by Smith and one that caused Smith’s great insult – are distinctly similar but also different in two important respects.

First, Williams does not suffer from hair loss, he says rolling rock. He says his hair was thinning, possibly due to a childhood case of measles and the treatment he received, so he decided to shave everything off one day and never look back.

Second, Smith’s inability to tell the joke was in jest because his wife was the target, not himself, Williams said.

“Chris Rock He is a comedian. I love Chris Rock. When Chris first made the comment, Will was laughing. It wasn’t until it became clear that Jada didn’t think it was funny to go to her defense. Love makes you do all kinds of things. This is his wife he loves. It was just a reaction of anger. “I would sometimes act out of anger,” Williams said.

“Of course, there’s more than one thing to do at that point. I wish he had used his words first and not second. Maybe they could have worked it out. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. It’s unfortunate how that happened,” Williams said.

He was glad Denzel Washington and Tyler Perry were able to pull Smith aside during the show to “talk to him and calm him down,” he said. Williams also doesn’t think the Academy should ask Smith to return the Best Actor award he received on Sunday for his role in it King Richard.

“They are both respectable young men,” Williams said of Smith and Rock. “I like the two of them. I don’t want to see anything bad happen to either of them. They need to sort this out themselves. I’d like to see them get through this and maybe come out together. I think there’s remorse on both sides.”