“I can’t believe you’re 14, I have to check myself.”
This year’s Oscars have divided everyone and their mother between those who either condemn or empathise with Will Smith for slapping Chris Rock in response to a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia.
But a lot of Will’s celeb peers who have criticised him for his actions are facing backlash themselves and being accused of selective outrage.
Zoë Kravitz, for example, is now under fire for comments she made about a then-underaged Jaden Smith that resurfaced on social media after she publicly called his dad out.
Confused? Allow us to explain.
As celebs often do, the Batman actress took to Instagram to share photos of her outfits from Oscars night in two separate posts.
Posting her outfit from the ceremony itself, she wrote: “here’s a picture of my dress at the award show where we are apparently assaulting people on stage now.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cbs9QLBPIY4/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
She followed up with a post featuring her look for the Vanity Fair after party, captioned “and here is a picture of my dress at the party after the award show – where we are apparently screaming profanities and assaulting people on stage now.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cbs-pDdvhkr/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
When a person commented “You don’t support him defending his wife?” Zoë simply replied, “nope.”
These posts likely led to ‘Zoë Kravitz and Will Smith’ being searched on Google and social media platforms, which brought up results from when she starred alongside the Smiths in the 2013 action film, After Earth.
She plays Will’s on-screen daughter and Jaden’s on-screen sister in the film, and while doing press for it, she was full of praise for the real-life father-and-son duo.
However, comments she made about Jaden in an interview with V-Magazine at the time are now raising eyebrows.
Zoë, who was 24 at the time the article went to print, is quoted as saying: “There were moments that I was hanging out with Jaden and thinking, ‘I can’t believe you’re 14, I have to check myself, like what I say to you.’ He has so much personality and so much swag, he is so much cooler than I am. And he’s so handsome, I was always like, ‘When you’re older, you know, we’ll hang out… Nope, that’s inappropriate, you’re 14.'”
The interview is available to view as it was printed (in a physical issue) on Just Jared.
A video from the Divergent premiere the following year also went viral for showing 25-year-old Zoë interrupting her interviewer to try to get Jaden’s attention, calling him her “date” and “the love of my life”, and asking him not to leave.
The resurfaced comments have caused a frenzy online given the age gap and the fact that Jaden was a minor at the time, with many Twitter users calling her behaviour inappropriate and her recent criticism of Will hypocritical.
And while some fans have defended it as nothing more than some light-hearted joking or displays of endearment, others have questioned whether the same would so easily be said if Jaden was the 20-something-year-old and Zoë was the teen.
