David Spade on Chris Rock’s Jada Pinkett Smith Joke: ‘Comedians Don’t Have Medical Charts’

Actor-comedian David Spade pushed back on a Twitter user, who said Chris Rock shouldn’t have joked about Jada Pinkett Smith’s bald head at the Oscars because she suffers from a hair loss disease. “Comedians don’t have a medical chart for everyone in the audience” Spade said.

Chris Rock cracked a joke about Will Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s bald head, referring to her as “G.I. Jane,” which elicited a shocking response from Will Smith, who marched onto the stage and slapped the comedian in the face.

The actor then twice shouted, “Keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth” after retaking his seat in the audience. Pinkett Smith’s short hair is due to her having alopecia.

“A GI Jane joke???” Spade tweeted on Sunday night in reaction to the wild and cringeworthy Oscars moment, to which one Twitter user criticized Space, commenting, “Why would you phrase this as ‘a GI Jane joke?’ instead of ‘a joke about a woman with alopecia’?”

“Because comedians don’t have a medical chart for everyone in the audience,” Spade responded.

Because comedians don’t have a medical chart for everyone in the audience. https://t.co/XzZcy9ITqq

— David Spade (@DavidSpade) March 29, 2022

Smith also justified his attack on Rock by claiming that the comedian was making fun of his wife for having alopecia.

“Jokes at my expense are a part of the job, but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally,” Smith wrote in his apology statement on Monday night.

It remains unclear, however, whether Rock knew about Pinkett Smith’s condition before he made the joke.

Spade’s defense of Rock comes after he warned that today’s irascible society is killing comedy. “One wrong move and you’re canceled,” Spade said last year of being a comedian in the age of cancel culture.

“It’s very dicey. It’s very tricky,” he said. “You used to have to say anything to go as far as you could, to push the envelope, to get attention, and people would be like, ‘I like this guy. He’s pushing it.’ And in comedy clubs, audiences really appreciate that.”

“Now you say the one wrong move and you’re canceled,” Spade added. “It’s a very tough world out there.”

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.