He has already gone on record to say that both Will Smith and Chris Rock have been his longtime friends, but Marlon Wayans was once again asked about his thoughts on the recent Academy Awards controversy. Smith is reportedly somewhere overseas taking some time away from the hustle and bustle of the industry while Rock has been on his comedy tour. Wayans has reportedly spoken to both men and shared a bit of what he told them.
“If somebody’s walking up on my stage, I know that you ain’t coming up to give me five,” Wayans told Big Boy's Neighborhood. “Like, at a point, you gotta go, ‘Oh yeah he’s trying to come harm me.’... You gotta protect yourself. If it that was me, I got an elbow for you. It’s a fight, you come on my stage we fighting."
"We do jokes, that’s what we do. You don’t go to a comedy show and be mad when they tell you jokes, that’s what you there for. I think people in they right mind know better, I don’t think people gonna go, ‘I’m gonna get up and slap you,'" he added about comedians being afraid of their audiences from this point forward.
Initially, Wayans couldn't believe that the slap actually occurred.
“I thought someone put something in my weed,” he said. “I think the pressure of 30 years of being excellent, that’s hard to do. That man just snapped. You gotta check on your strong friends. … Something was wrong for him to snap, and forget about what he’s been working towards for 30 years.”
He said he checked in on Rock to make sure the comedian was doing well and also spoke with Smith. "I was like, 'Hey brother you may want to go get you about three hours of therapy,’” Wayans joked. “Fifteen hours this week, you need to sit down with a therapist and have a long talk. Something is going on with you.’ And that wasn’t him. See, I don’t have that kind of pressure. He’s been Black excellence for 30 years, I’ve been Black alrightness, ain’t too much pressure... People expect me to do dumb stuff, but him? Nah, not Will.”
Check out Marlon Wayans's interview below.