Jada Pinkett Smith calls for "healing" amid husband Will Smith's Oscar controversy

CNN

"This is a season for healing and I'm here for it," she wrote in a statement posted to Instagram, two days after her husband slapped Chris Rock over a joke he made about her hair. Meanwhile, Will Smith’s mother, Carolyn Smith, said she's never seen her son "go off" like he did Sunday: “He is a very even, people person,” Carolyn Smith told Philadelphia’s local ABC affiliate Action News. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen him go off. First time in his lifetime…I’ve never seen him do that.”

ALSO:

• New poll claims majority of Americans think Will Smith was right to slap Chris Rock
• Jim Carrey was "sickened" by the "spineless" standing ovation for Will Smith at the Oscars: “I was sickened by the standing ovation,” Carrey told Gayle King on CBS Mornings. “I felt like Hollywood is just spineless en masse.” Carrey said that if he were Chris Rock, he'd sue Smith for $200 million. “You do not have the right to ... smack somebody in the face because they said words,” Carrey said, adding that it was “a selfish moment that cast a pall over the whole thing.”
• Whoopi Goldberg says Oscars didn't boot Smith so they wouldn't have to explain "why they're taking the Black man out": "The reason they didn’t go and take him out is because that would have been another 15 — 20 minute explanation of why we’re taking the Black man out five seconds before they’re about to decide whether he’s won an Oscar or not," Goldberg said on The View. "So that’s, and I’m going to say I believe Will Packer made the right decision. He said, let’s get through the rest of this so we can deal with it wholeheartedly. So that’s what went on. This is not the first time craziness has happened on stage, but this is the first time we’ve seen anybody assault anybody on stage."
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says Smith's violent outburst perpetuates “stereotypes about the Black community": “When Will Smith stormed onto the Oscar stage to strike Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife’s short hair, he did a lot more damage than just to Rock’s face,” the NBA legend wrote in a Monday column on his Substack titled “Will Smith Did a Bad, Bad Thing.” “With a single petulant blow, he advocated violence, diminished women, insulted the entertainment industry, and perpetuated stereotypes about the Black community.”
• Thomas Haden Church calls for Oscars to ban Smith "for the rest of his life": "I think that Will Smith should be banned from the Oscars for the rest of his life," said the Oscar-nominated actor. "I think he should have his Academy membership stripped, but I don't think he should have the Oscar taken from him."