Chris Rock’s Emancipation mistake edited out of live Netflix stand-up special
Chris Rock flubbed a joke about Will Smith's movie Concussion in his live special, which was removed later by Netflix
Aux News Chris Rock
So much for live, huh? Chris Rock’s new Netflix stand-up special Selective Outrage made history as the first to be broadcast live on the streaming service, which means fans got to see every joke—and every flub—in real-time. But now that the live event is over, the comedian and the company can go back and rewrite history, in a sense, tweaking the special as they see fit. That includes erasing one crucial mistake made during Rock’s riff about the Will Smith slap.
“Years ago, his wife said I should quit the Oscars; I shouldn’t host ’cause her man didn’t get nominated for Emancipation, the biggest piece of shit ever!” Rock said in the live version (per The Hollywood Reporter). “No, not Emancipation, I fucked up the joke.” In the version now streaming, the comedian accurately names the film Smith didn’t get nominated for as Concussion.
A production source told THR that Rock “was aware of the edit” and worked with Netflix on the final streaming cut. There is, of course, nothing wrong with a comic choosing the best take with the best line delivery to be presented in a filmed special—that’s how stand-up specials usually work. It’s just that Selective Outrage was, by nature of being a livestream event, not a usual stand-up special. It’s Rock’s product, and he has every right to swap out the mistake for a more polished version. But the flub was a marker of the more daring, history-making moment that the special was marketed as.
As for the content of the actual joke, there’s a lot of history between Rock and the Smiths to unpack before the audience can decide on its accuracy for themselves. Rock hosted in 2016, a year that many prominent Black artists, including Jada Pinkett Smith, criticized the Academy for a total lack of diversity in its nominees. Pinkett Smith didn’t specify her husband’s snub as part of her public critiques, but Concussion was technically eligible that year. However, a number of other non-white potential nominees were also overlooked at that particular ceremony, including actors from Creed, Beasts Of No Nation, and Straight Outta Compton.
Rock targeted Pinkett Smith specifically in his 2016 Oscars monologue, joking that “it’s only unemployed people that tell you to quit something.” “Jada got mad and said she’s not coming. Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. I wasn’t invited!” he cracked at the time. “But I understand. I’m not hating. I understand you’re mad. Jada’s mad her man, Will, was not nominated for Concussion. It’s also not fair that Will was paid $20 million for Wild Wild West.”
The comic choosing to pick on Pinkett Smith once again when he returned to the Oscars stage in 2022 seems a likely reason that her husband then reacted with violence (though in a later apology video the King Richard star stated, “I made a choice on my own, from my own experiences, from my history with Chris. Jada had nothing to do with it”). But if the Smiths bear a grudge about how the 2016 Oscars went down, clearly so does Rock. “Nobody’s picking on this bitch. She started this shit. Nobody was picking on her,” he argues in Selective Outrage. “She said me, a grown-ass man, should quit his job because her husband didn’t get nominated. And then [he] gives me a concussion. What the fuck, man?”
While the new version of the special is at least corrected in terms of Concussion, it still has one blatant inaccuracy. “Even in animation this motherfucker’s bigger,” Rock jokes, comparing himself to Smith. “I’m a zebra”—referencing his character in Madagascar, a movie which coincidentally co-stars Jada Pinkett Smith—“He’s a shark.” Will Smith does not play a shark in the movie Shark Tale, rather he voices a Bluestreak cleaner wrasse fish, which is a lot smaller than a zebra. Hey, if you’re going back in to edit mistakes, might as well have all the facts straight.
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Towelie and Mr. Hankey had been friends for years, but lately, they couldn’t seem to get along. It started when Towelie made a joke about Mr. Hankey’s size, and Mr. Hankey didn’t take it very well. From then on, every time they were together, they would argue and get mad at each other.One day, they were both hanging out in the park, trying to enjoy the beautiful weather. Towelie was smoking a joint, and Mr. Hankey was just sitting on a nearby bench, minding his own business. Towelie tried to strike up a conversation, but Mr. Hankey wasn’t in the mood.“Why are you always so uptight, man?” Towelie said, exhaling a cloud of smoke.“I’m not uptight,” Mr. Hankey snapped. “I just don’t appreciate you making fun of me all the time.”Towelie rolled his eyes. “I was just joking, dude. Can’t you take a joke?”“Not when it’s at my expense,” Mr. Hankey said, his voice rising. “You’re always making fun of me, and it’s getting old.”Towelie took a deep breath, trying to calm down. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to upset you.”But Mr. Hankey wasn’t having it. “You always say that, but you never change your behavior. You’re just a selfish, insensitive jerk.”Towelie felt his temper flare. “And you’re just a big baby who can’t take a little ribbing. Maybe if you weren’t so sensitive, we could be friends again.”Mr. Hankey stood up, his fists clenched. “I don’t want to be friends with someone who doesn’t respect me. Goodbye, Towelie.”And with that, Mr. Hankey stormed off, leaving Towelie alone in the park. Towelie felt a pang of regret as he watched his friend go, but he couldn’t help feeling like Mr. Hankey was overreacting. They had been friends for so long, surely they could work things out.But as the days turned into weeks, Towelie realized that maybe their friendship was over for good. He missed Mr. Hankey, but he didn’t know how to make things right. He knew he had been insensitive, but he didn’t know how to make it up to Mr. Hankey.In the end, Towelie realized that sometimes friendships come to an end, and there’s nothing you can do about it. He wished Mr. Hankey all the best and hoped that someday they could reconcile, but for now, he had to accept that their friendship was over.Just like the heyday of Chris Rock’s career.
I thought he was still bitter about that table dance.
I don’t think Towelie is really that introspective.
I didn’t see the live stream, but I watched it a few days ago before the edit and I thought “I can’t believe they left that.” But also that it was a cool little totally live moment which totally happens all the time to performers of all types.
Every comedy specials gets edited. Mistakes that happen live are cleaned up after the fact. This isn’t anything new.
Yeah, they usually tape two separate shows for this reason. Kevin Smith had his heart attack between two tapings.
Bet the Continuity Girl fuckin’ loved that.
I was at a taping for a Netflix special last year, and while I knew that specials get edited, it was really interesting to see how that played out live. I guess I didn’t realize how often in tapings comedians stop and take a line again. It probably happened 6-8 times in the hour-long taping. I recently went back and watched the special on Netflix, and it’s amazing how smooth the editing is. You would never know the comedian messed up any jokes or took a line over again.
I’m curious, who was the comic? The way you describe makes me think it was a single show that was recorded. Stopping & re-doing a joke is why many comics will film it at least twice (if not more), then edit it together.
I saw a taping where someone straight up bombed for 15 minutes. I’m not gonna watch the resulting special but I do wonder if they ended up just cutting that whole part out or if they added laughs in post.
i was at a taping like this as well. the featured comic was begging people to laugh.
Yeah, but the AV Club and The Root have been desperately hatemongering on Chris Rock for a week now, and have quickly run out of stupid fucking bullshit to complain about.I guess this is something!Even if it’s actually nothing at all.
Exactly. Two of my cousins were at one of the taping nights for John Mulaney’s last Netflix special and – hoo-boy – they fix a lot in post-production editing. It’s also standard practice so this “headline” is laughable.
An article about correcting mistakes on a site that rarely corrects its own mistakes. I’m going back to bed.
Haaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!
Sad that I can only star this post once instead of the dozens it deserves.
And here you are complaining. Don’t you have anything better to do?The Kinja haters surely always admit their mistakes, just like their cult leader daddy…
And which cult leader would that be?
You mean Ernie?
Big Daddy?
you too
Even in the context of all of this, the fact that Chris Rock sees the 2016 movement to get the Academy to acknowledge and address its racial bias as Jada Pinkett Smith starting beef with him is just stunning to me.
It’s honestly an insane take on his part and all his quotes about the boycott have aged like milk. But of course he’s not gonna go after Spike Lee or Ryan Coogler…Also, having had some time to reflect on this, the special just made him look bad. The initial “discourse” around this was that Will Smith randomly attacked him, but this just confirms that he was intentionally trying to provoke him so honestly whatever.
Agree. I felt bad for him at first, because, come on, you’re just not allowed to walk up and slap people. But at the same time, he’s been poking the bear for a while and delighted in it.
Chris Rock has been very rich and very famous for a very long time, and like most comedians in that position, he sticks by the perception that he’s an underdog. Like, he hosted the Oscars, arguably the most prestigious job in Hollywood, and he has a chip on his shoulder about Jada Pinkett Smith’s career. The shelf life on stand up comedians seems to be about ten or fifteen years after they make it big.
Wait, hold on… Jada Pinkett Smith has a career?
But that’s not the take.He’s not talking about the movement generally. He’s talking his interaction with Jada Pinkett-Smith specifically.Which is perfectly valid. One can agree with the overall idea that diversity is necessary, while also looking at the Smiths pushing to get Will an Oscar for Concussion as a mostly narcissistic exercise for an entirely undeserving performance.
But we don’t actually know what Jada’s conversation with Chris Rock about the boycott was actually like.While he’s suggesting she wanted him to step out because Will wasn’t nominated, it is very possible she didn’t say anything about Will’s nomination when asking him not to host and he just projected that as a reason why she would want him to step down.Just like how in this special he’s projecting that the reason Will slapped him was Jada’s relationships with other men and taking that out on Chris Rock…rather than the slap being a result of the jokes he said.
But we don’t need to know the content of their conversation to know that when he talks about having a negative interaction with Jada and being annoyed about it, he’s talking specifically about his interaction with Jada.Reading that as him making a statement about anything larger is a stretch.
It’s possible the issue is she had a private conversation with him about this. Which would be the f’d up part that he’s making it public. If she tweeted something, then it’s fair game.
Did you see Marlon Wayans: God Loves Me: on HBO Max? If you haven’t you might see the ad and think it’s just another stand up special full of random jokes for an hour. No, the entire thing is about Will Smith, Jada and Chris Rock and the slap. Marlon makes it work. He wraps up the whole thing in a nice bow. In a lot of ways it’s funnier and more insightful than the recent Chris Rock stand up special.
But the flub was a marker of the more daring, history-making moment that the special was marketed as.yeah ok
It’s just that Selective Outrage was, by nature of being a livestream event, not a usual stand-up special.
How is this different, exactly? He did a live performance that people saw live and then the performance was edited after the fact to remove a mistake that he made so that the people watching the no-longer-live event would get the correct version of the joke. That it was a stream and not an in-person performance doesn’t matter at all.
The stream was literally live. As in, the live show that people were seeing in the audience was being broadcast live over Netflix. People who were watching the live stream saw that mistake as is, whereas now it’s been edited out as if it didn’t happen like that (from what I understand from the article; I haven’t seen either version). It’s not like a typical stand-up special that’s an edited version of a live show. I mean, that’s what it is now, but it was actually streamed live on Netflix when it happened.
It’s not like a typical stand-up special that’s an edited version of a live show.
That’s exactly what it is. Just because the original version and the non-live version are/were both accessed in the same way doesn’t make this any different than editing any other live show. I would have been surprised if they hadn’t edited it at all after the fact, even if it was only to like clean up technical issues.
A large man physically attacks a relatively smaller man. He does not challenge him to a fight, or walk up there and square up. No, he sucker-slaps him, at a venue where he knows the smaller man is unlikely to defend himself. And that’s that, right?Not exactly. You see, the smaller man is a comedian. He waits a year, doesn’t say much, then slaps back his own way. F the Fresh Prince. Chris Rock is awesome.
I haven’t seen it so I could be missing something, but from every write up I’ve read, he doesn’t slap back at the person who assaulted him with this special. He slaps back by calling a woman who didn’t attack him a bitch, amongst other things. Chris Rock is not awesome. He’s a child. You don’t have to pretend Chris Rock is a good person just because Will Smith did something stupid.
missed the other inaccuracy… he mentions not being shirtless in his movies, but Dogma begs to differ.
The one thing that’s never been addressed re: the SLAP is the fact that Will Smith was high as a fucking kite, and not on booze or weed. Have you ever looked at his and Jada’s eyes in those shots, or at the after party after? Those motherfuckers are feeeeucked up, fucked up on pills it looks like, cause he’s got crazy eyes, especially when he’s screaming.Let’s see someone ask him about that. Dude was out of his mind, that’s the reason for the slap.
Wowser, you’ll be telling us next that bands overdub parts of their concerts before releasing live albums!
According to Keith, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out was TOTALLY not changed or touched up. According to Mick’s Jagger & Taylor, they went in and redid some stuff.
Famously, they had to overdub Keith Moon’s drumming from the Shepperton Studios version of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” because you could hear all the pills rattling around in him through the kit mics:…maybe.
At any rate, watch it in 4K. You can see Pete’s bleeding pick finger!
“It’s just that Selective Outrage was, by nature of being a livestream event, not a usual stand-up special.”
For fuck’s sake.
The special was aired live. That NEVER meant that the version that was later posted to Netflix for the rest of time is live.
You’re aware that LIVE standup specials are all taped in front of LIVE audiences and then edited before they’re released, right?It was broadcast live. It is no longer live.
It wasn’t Jada who slapped him but he has the nerve to go to her hometown and make those nasty jokes about her.
GOOD.
Why does she threaten you so?
Not threatened, annoyed by people who think they’re better than everyone else.
Not her hometown!!!!
The comic choosing to pick on Pinkett Smith once again when he returned to the Oscars stage in 2022 seems a likely reason that her husband then reacted with violence. “She said me, a grown-ass man, should quit his job because her husband didn’t get nominated. And then [he] gives me a concussion. What the fuck, man?”Personally, I think he should drop the topic. Partly because it’s time to move on, and partly because it’s not funny. But… he’s not entirely wrong about some of this. It just doesn’t belong in stand-up comedy.Jada did criticize every black person that year about attending. But the year Will gets nominated, she attends. Rock also correctly pointed out that Jada has humiliated her husband on Red Table Talk by airing every single item of laundry to the public. Which I suspect might be the real root of Smith’s anger.To be clear. She is NOT responsible for her husband’s violent reaction to Rock. But she also did NOT defend him afterwards. She could have stood by him (much like his misguided defence of her) by releasing a statement that her husband reacted poorly, but it was an act of love for her. She did not. She simply released a statement saying “it’s time to heal”. Which is on brand with her new career as a sage (Red Table Talk). I get the impression that Jada is simply not a great person, and that both Smith’s need to step away for a bit and work their relationship out privately (not on her show). And Rock maybe needs to retire.
It was a pretty minor flub, dude corrected it himself seconds later, it showed that it really was live. Now if it was a good joke or not… an edit can’t fix that.
If you watched it live, you got to see the whole thing, warts and all. After that, they can and should edit the show, if needed, to make it better/more watchable.
“Editors? What are those?”
– Gawker
“Dead weight,” Jim Spanfeller replied.
It’s actually nice to see professionals make mistakes. We should make this a thing. He made the mistake, acknowledged it, and continued successfully. We should normalize mistakes and not always show this ruse of perfection. #my2cents
You’re going to put a lot of auto-tunes out of work!
“What is ‘I’ve run out of things to write about’ for $500?”
I’m all for Chris fine-tuning/editing any joke at Will Smith’s expense.
This rag getting on someone about getting facts straight is a joke in itself
Wait is his special called Emancipation (same as Will Smiths recent film)? That’s hilarious.
As much as I’m like “woof lets move on” I’m weirdly into this. Will Smith has tried to apologize so many times and failed. This does feel earned. Emancipation got snubbed too and this is Oscars weekend. Amazing.