Chris Rock realizes his intention to give up porn and move beyond the Oscar slap

Chris Rock covers a lot of ground in his new GQ the cover story – the first of Men of the Year magazine’s winners to be revealed this year – opening about the dissolution of his marriage and what porn had to do with it, why he makes smaller, tailored films like his new one, Misty greenthe future of his stand-up career and, of course, the infamous Oscars incident when he was slapped by Will Smith on stage.

On this last subject, he is about to be done with it. “Yeah. Something happened. It wasn’t cool. And I’d like to move on. I’d like to – I had a great career before this, and I know there’s a part of that that’s going to follow me for the rest of my life,” Rock said. GQ senior special correspondent Zach Baron. “I have jokes. I have scripts. I have movie scripts. I have TV shows. I’m writing a book. I’m doing shit. I have a plethora of artwork that I’m trying to put out there, and that’s what I want you to pay attention to, not a wild party.”

That said, Rock has come to accept being asked personal questions these days due to living in a “talkative” culture. “We live in a world where Andy Cohen is Norman Lear and Ryan Murphy is Steven Spielberg. That’s the world we live in. So people want gossip. We are righteous people who follow nine commandments. And the one commandment we don’t follow is you shall not spread false testimony. Our goal now is to spread false testimony. That’s the world we live in. And that’s what journalism, or at least journalism journalism, has become. entertainment,” he explained.

And he played along with Baron, talking about his divorce from ex-wife Malaak Compton-Rock after 19 years of marriage.

“Nobody’s successfully divorced, so it takes time. Then once it’s done, you’re not sitting on the money you had before, so now you really have to make money. So you go on tour, or two tours. So there’s been a lot of stand-up. There’s been a lot of putting my life back together. There’s been a pandemic, there’s a bunch of nonsense going on out there,” he revealed while also taking responsibility for the fracture. “I wasn’t a good husband. I watched a lot of porn. I don’t watch porn anymore. I haven’t watched porn in five, six years.”

He did more work on himself than just cutting porn out of his life, going to therapy in an emotional state. “We have this thing where everyone brags about their therapy. In other words, my personal life wasn’t what I wanted it to be, and I’m going to leave it at that. And that’s my relationship with everyone. So yeah, I walked in there crying like a female dog. Like, what the fuck is going on?”

Looking to the future, Rock, whose new film Misty green comes to Netflix on November 9 after making its theatrical debut via A24 last month, plans to direct more feature films and possibly return to the stage at some point.

“I had six, seven specials, man. It’s a lot. So I don’t know. I’m not announcing anything or anything, but if I do it, I want to do it right. In sports, especially in football, they always talk about splits. ‘Can he get the split?’ You know what I mean? ‘Yeah, he’s fast, but is he fast enough? Can he get the split? And that’s how I feel about stand-up. As long as I can get separation, I will,” he said. “I’m going to write. That’s basically what it comes down to. Wake up, write. That’s all. Write, write, write, write, write. Take it all out.”

Rock’s full interview with Baron, which also appears in the writer’s “One More Question” interview series, can be found here.