Marlon Wayans opened up about the subject matter of his new HBO Max comedy special in a March 2 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Wayans explained that he would spend a lot of time talking about the infamous Oscar slap between Chris Rock and Will Smith in God Loves Me. He admitted that although he would be joking about the incident, he wouldn’t be using Jada Pinkett-Smith’s alopecia as part of it, despite how involved it was in the slap happening. 

Wayans said, “That’s a condition, and that’s something that I won’t say I’m making fun of. Nobody knew that she had it. Jada is a very stylistic person. She’s fashion-forward. I don’t think Chris saw the episode of Red Table Talk where she talked about that. So I think Chris is just kind of commenting off the top, and I think they were dealing with the condition of it, and Will was being protective.” He gave his take on the whole thing before explaining why it wouldn’t have a place in God Loves Me.

“I just felt that would weigh down the special. That needs its own 10 minutes. And I think that’s a separate piece. And that takes investigation. It’s not what I knew, and I don’t want to be insensitive to anybody that’s going through that. I think that that would have convoluted the message, so I left it out, and I just explored what was funny from a place that we could digest. I felt like some things are too hard to digest, so let me not spend that time dealing with that because it becomes something else. That’s a special unto itself.”

It was important for the White Chicks star to respect that boundary, and while Wayans admitted he still planned to crack quips about Smith and Rock, he would handle it without disrespecting the men involved.

“I can’t worry about what everybody’s thinking, what everybody feels. I have to talk about it because nobody else is. I have to come from an honest place as a brother. So I just felt, at this moment, all I could do is speak truth and hope everybody could see themselves.”

Wayans’ comedy special, God Loves Me, premiered on HBO Max and was generally well received despite the controversial subject matter.