Chris Rock's mom on Will Smith: What were you thinking?

Author and motivational speaker Rose Rock, the mother of comedian Chris Rock, is speaking publicly for the first time about actor Will Smith notoriously slapping her son at this year's Academy Awards over a joke to which Smith objected.

"When Will slapped Chris he slapped all of us," Rock, 77, said Friday on "Soda City Live," a talk show on WIS-TV in Columbia, South Carolina, her original home state. "He really slapped me … because when you hurt my child, you hurt me," she said.

Rose Rock did not attend the March 27 ceremony and was watching at home as Smith marched to the stage while Chris Rock riffed before presenting an award, and then struck the unwary comic over a joke about Smith's wife, actor Jada Pinkett Smith. As Will Smith returned to his seat, where he shouted obscenities at Rock, the comic expressed surprise but kept his composure.

Rose Rock said she had thought it had been staged until Smith "started with the obscenities."

When asked what she would say to Smith if she could, Rose Rock responded, "I have no idea what I would say other than, 'What in the world were you thinking? Because you did a slap, but so many things could have happened from that. Chris could have stepped back and fallen. You really could have gotten taken out in handcuffs. You didn't think. You reacted to your wife's giving you the side-eye and you went up and you made her day, because she was bowled over laughing when it happened.' "

She said her son "is doing well. … He's still processing it."

As for whether she would like to see Chris Rock and Smith meet and reconcile, "That would have to be on them," she said, adding, "I feel really bad that he never apologized. I mean, his people wrote up a piece and said, 'I apologize to Chris Rock,' but, see, something like that is personal: You reach out."

SMITH REAPPEARS IN PUBLIC. Smith, who won the Academy Award for best actor the same night, for his starring role as tennis coach Richard Williams in "King Richard," was caught on camera in public Saturday for the first time since assaulting Rock.

Outlets including People magazine and TMZ.com have variously posted photos and video supplied by the California-based photo agency Mega, showing Smith cheerfully exiting a white SUV outside a hotel in Mumbai, India.

"The 53-year-old actor, who was subsequently banned from future Oscar ceremonies for the next 10 years, was all smiles, [and] posed for pictures with fans and waved to onlookers as he was seen at a private airfield in Mumbai, India," reads metatext Mega embedded into one photo. "The purpose of his trip is not known."