Chris Rock to perform for first time following Will Smith’s Oscar smack
Rock could break his silence about getting smacked at the Oscars by Will Smith.
Update: Chris Rock has added a Philadelphia date on Sept. 23 at the Met Philadelphia.
Chris Rock could break his silence about being slapped by Will Smith at the Oscars when he performs in Boston on Wednesday night, his first standup performance after the unscripted incident stunned Academy Award viewers.
But if you want tickets, they’re going to cost you.
The comedian is set to perform six shows at The Wilbur beginning Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are sold out, but prices on the secondary market have skyrocketed following the incident at the Academy Awards, in which Rock was struck live on stage by an angry Smith over a joke involving Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
The cheapest tickets on StubHub for Rock’s first show were selling for $315 each as of Tuesday morning, while good seats were going for more than $700. That’s up from a low of $46 per ticket when they first went on sale, according to TickPick, where some tickets were selling for more than $900.
» READ MORE: Philly celebs, from DJ Jazzy Jeff to Stephen A. Smith, react to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars
After performing in Boston, Rock will officially kick off his Ego Death World Tour with two performances in Atlantic City at the Borgata on Saturday. On Stubhub, tickets for the comedian’s first performance at 7 p.m. started at $212, but closer seats topped $450. Prices were similar on other ticket sites, including Vivid Seats and TicketNetwork.
While Rock isn’t scheduled to appear in Philadelphia on his upcoming tour, he will perform at Wind Creek Bethlehem and in Baltimore at The Lyric.
After winning his first Academy Award and celebrating with fellow celebrities at a Vanity Fair party, Smith apologized to Rock and others in a statement shared on social media Monday afternoon. “I was out of line and I was wrong,” the Philadelphia native wrote, adding that he was “embarrassed” by his actions and that he was a “work in progress.”
During the ceremony, Rock joked he was looking forward to seeing Pinkett Smith in G.I. Jane 2 due to her haircut. In 2018, Pinkett Smith revealed she was suffering hair loss after being diagnosed with alopecia. According to TMZ, Rock wasn’t aware of Pinkett Smith’s health issues when he told the joke, and left the Oscars shortly after handing an Academy Award to another Philadelphia native, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson.
Meanwhile, Smith is rumored to speak on the incident on Pinkett Smith’s show, Red Table Talk, which airs on Facebook Watch. According to Radar, the couple received multiple offers from shows to discuss the incident, including Good Morning America and The Today Show. But in the end, they decided the best outlet to offer their thoughts was on Pinkett Smith show.
The Academy said Monday it was conducting a “formal review” of the incident and “will explore further action and consequences.” The organization’s standards for conduct list “physical contact that is uninvited and, in the situation, inappropriate and unwelcome” as unacceptable, though officials allowed Smith to remain at the Dolby Theater and accept his Academy Award on stage following the incident.
» READ MORE: Chris Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair loss was cruel. Will wasn’t having it.