Chris Rock says he stopped watching porn years ago, and he is done talking about the night Will Smith slapped him onstage at the Oscars. In a new cover story for the men’s magazine’s Men of the Year issue, the first of that year’s honorees to be unveiled, Rock sat down with senior special correspondent Zach Baron and covered his divorce, his therapy, his next film and his future in stand-up.

The Oscar incident is the subject he wants to close. “Yeah. Something happened. It wasn’t cool. And I would like to move on,” Rock said. He acknowledged that it will follow him for the rest of his life, but he pushed back on the idea that it defines his career. “I had a nice career before it,” he said.

A rare admission about his marriage

The most personal part of the interview is Rock’s account of his marriage to Malaak Compton-Rock, which ended after 19 years. He did not hide behind vague language. “I was not a great husband. I watched a lot of porn. I don’t watch porn anymore. I haven’t watched porn in five, six years.”

That admission is the core of the redemption arc he describes. Rock framed the change as a habit he dropped rather than a public image he polished. For a comedian who has spent decades turning his private life into material, the directness stands out.

Divorce, money and the road back

Rock explained that the split took longer than he expected. “Nobody has a successful divorce, so that takes time,” he said. He also described the financial reality that followed. “Once it’s done, you’re not sitting on the money you had before, so now you got to really make some money.” That pressure, he said, sent him back on the road for one or two tours. “So there was a lot of stand-up. There was a lot of getting my life together. You got a pandemic, you got a bunch of nonsense going on there,” he said.

Therapy was part of the repair too. Rock said he went into therapy in a rough emotional state, and he did not dress it up. “We do have this thing where everybody’s like — they brag about their therapy. Put it this way, my personal life wasn’t what I wanted it to be, and I’ll leave it at that,” he said. Then he offered the most unvarnished line of the piece: “So yeah, I went in there crying like a bitch. Like: What the fuck is going on?”

Why he is asking for a different conversation

Rock has also made peace with the fact that personal questions come with the territory. He blamed a culture that rewards gossip over reporting. “We live in a world where Andy Cohen is Norman Lear and Ryan Murphy is Steven Spielberg. That is the world we live in. So people want gossip,” he said.

He went further, using a joke about commandments to make a serious point. “We’re righteous people that follow nine commandments. And the one commandment we don’t follow is thou shall not spread false witness. We are all about spreading false witness now,” Rock said. “And that’s what journalism, or at least entertainment journalism, has become.”

Rock appears on the cover alongside other honorees in the Men of the Year franchise, including Matt Damon, Andrew Garfield, Denis Villeneuve and Michael Rider. The company he keeps in that issue is a reminder that the magazine is spotlighting people with major careers, and Rock wants his current work to be the main point of focus.

The work he wants you to see

Rock says the next chapter is about output. He pointed to a new film, Misty Green, which debuted in theaters through A24 last month and hits Netflix on Nov. 9. He also said he plans to direct more feature films and may return to the stage. He described the smaller, tailored projects as a way to make something specific rather than something big for its own sake.

On stand-up, he was cautious about making promises. “I got like six, seven specials, man. That’s a lot. So I don’t know. I’m not announcing anything or anything, but if I do it, I want to do it right.” He then reached for a football metaphor to explain his standard. “As long as I can get separation, I’ll do it,” he said, borrowing the language of receivers who need space to get open.

Asked what comes next, he kept it simple. “I got jokes. I got scripts. I got movie scripts. I got TV shows. I’m writing a book. I’m doing shit. I have a plethora of art I’m trying to get out, and that’s what I want you to pay attention to, not some crazy night.”

His daily routine, as he described it, is as plain as his message. “I’m going to write. That’s basically what it boils down to. Wake up, write. That’s it. Just write, write, write, write, write. Get it all out.”

“I was not a great husband. I watched a lot of porn. I don’t watch porn anymore. I haven’t watched porn in five, six years.”

Where to read the full conversation

The complete interview with Baron is also featured in the writer’s interview series “One More Question.” Rock’s comments show a comedian trying to close one chapter in public, own the parts of his private life that went wrong, and point his audience toward the next body of work.