Chris Rock made headlines this week after he “stormed out” of billionaire Anthony Pratt’s recent Christmas party where he had been booked to perform.
The comedian, 59, was reportedly in the middle of his stand-up set when he saw something in the audience that “upset” him. He then shouted something into the audience before “forcefully” making his way through the crowd to the exit doors, columnist Cindy Adams wrote for the New York Post.
Adams said Rock shouted that “he wasn’t supposed to be taped, videoed, reported or whatever else wasn’t supposed to happen.”
The comedian then “[barreled] quickly, forcefully, through people to the exit doors... Without a second’s hesitation [he] stormed out — never to return.”
The Independent has now learned from a source close to Rock that he left because someone was filming his set. The source further denied the Daily Mail’s report that Rock cut his set short because there were children in the audience and his routine was not suitable for young people.
Following Rock’s set, Keith Urban took the stage and performed a nearly-two-hour concert for attendees.
Rock has mostly remained out of the spotlight since he was infamously slapped in the face by Will Smith during the 2022 Oscars.
He did, however, release his Netflix special Selective Outrage in March 2023.
In the special, Rock addressed the Oscars slap, quipping: “Will Smith practices selective outrage. Because everybody knows what the f*** happened.
“I didn’t have any entanglements. Will Smith’s wife was f***ing her son’s friend, OK. Normally I would not talk about that s*** but for some reason (they) put that on the internet. We’ve all been cheated on. None of us have ever been interviewed by the person we cheated on on television. She hurt him way more than he hurt me.”
His remarks were in reference to a 2020 episode of Jada Pinkett Smith’s Facebook Watch show Red Table Talk, in which she sat down with her husband to discuss her affair with R&B singer August Alsina.
Rock revealed that he had tried to contact Smith to offer his condolences about the affair.
“He didn’t take my call,” Rock said.
He then made a bold claim about Pinkett Smith, adding: “Nobody’s picking on her — she started this s***.”
Acknowledging that the slap hurt, Rock joked: “But I’m not a victim baby. You will never see me on Oprah or Gayle, crying. Never gonna happen. I took that hit like Pacquiao.”
He told viewers that he didn’t fight back “because I got parents, and you know what my parents told me, don’t fight in front of white people.”
