“That Was A Rage” – Deadline 

An emotional Will Smith revisited Oscar night with Trevor Noah on Monday by explaining what drove him to slap Chris Rock in front of millions of viewers.

I was gone, dude,” Smith told Noah on The Daily Show. “That was a rage that had been bottled for a really long time.”

Smith, who was on the Comedy Central show to promote his latest film Emancipation, shared a heartfelt story about coming home from winning his first Academy Award and having to explain his behavior to his 9-year-old nephew. “He’s the sweetest little boy. He stayed up late to see his Uncle Will. We are sitting in the kitchen, he’s on my lap holding Oscar, [and he asked] ‘why did you hit that man, Uncle Will?’”

“Why you trying to Oprah me?” Smith remembered thinking. “I was like, it was a mess. I don’t want to go too far into it to give people more to misunderstand.”

Earlier in the discussion, Smith tried to explain his behavior by reminding people “you just never know what somebody is going through.”

“I was going through something that night,” he said, while turning to address the Daily Show audience. “That doesn’t justifies my behavior at all.”

“We just gotta be nice to each other, man,” Smith continued, gripping a tissue. “It’s hard. I guess the thing that was most painful for me, is I took my heart and made it hard for other people. I understood the idea when they say hurt people hurt people.”

He also talked about how he became “the little boy that watched his father beat up his mother, all of that bubbled up in that moment. That’s not who I want to be. “

Noah tried several times to stick up for Smith saying “everybody can make a mistake” and how the actor’s actions on Oscar night were “not who you are.” Noah also called out the “relentlessly shitty” press that he and his wife Jada Pinkett have had to endure ever since the slap.

It brought Smith to tears.

“I understand how shocking it was to people,” Smith said.