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Omari Hardwick Talks Backlash Over Beyoncé Kiss
Omari Hardwick has been keeping quiet about the backlash he faced after embracing and kissing Beyoncé at the 2019 NAACP Image Awards, but this week he broke his silence and explained what was REALLY going on.
Speaking about fatherhood and raising his daughter Nova in an interview with Global Grind, the Power actor says that night he was just worried about his baby girl because she’d scratched her cornea. Omari says both Beyoncé and Jay-Z asked about Nova that night, which then led to an extended chat with Hov and the viral moment with Bey.
From Global Grind:
Criticized for how he interacted with Beyoncé at the award show, Omari had yet to discuss the moment publicly until explaining during our interview that, that night he was simply a worried father thanking his friends who’d expressed concern for his daughter throughout the night.
“She has ironically been injured in two very historical moments for me,” Omari told Global Grind when asked about Nova. “Her cornea was scratched the night of the Image Awards. The length of [my] talk with Jay was him asking me about her eye. The length of the hug with Bey was her asking about her eye. I give the speech and I bring up her eye,” he recalls.
Describing another moment when his daughter was hurt, Omari went on to tell us Nova’s head had been “busted by her little brother.” “Her eye is scratched by him the night of the Image Awards. A month to maybe a month and a half later, within the time of Nipsey’s death (who was a friend), now her head is busted,” he said, eyes wide with panic. “So, being a father of a daughter, makes it to where the MET experience for me might’ve been the most slow motion, beautifully embraced reality… walking through those long halls of that gallery… because I was thinking so much, on that long walk through those artifacts, about Nova. I kept thinking about Nova,” he revealed, referencing his appearance alongside Dapper Dan at the 2019 MET Gala earlier this week.
Omari also said Jay is like a big bro, so there’s no way he wouldn’t show Beyoncé love.
In an earlier sidebar, Omari explained that while the world knows him as Ghost, Jay-Z knows him as a little brother, saying “Jay-Z would’ve punched me in my face if I didn’t hug his wife. He would’ve said ‘n*gga, you don’t see Bey?’”
He tells the site that at no point in his life, even before having his daughter, did he think disrespecting women was cool…
“My honor and my respect for women – while you have idiot fanbases who go ‘Watch your wife around Omari’ – I got a wife (A), so f*ck you. I love you, but f*ck you (B). (C), I respect women so much prior to Nova being born that once Nova got to Earth… man, it doubled my respect for women. But I had it already ’cause I had a pop, who validated my existence as a man, so I didn’t think demeaning women was ever cool.”
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