Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed that she and her husband Will Smith have been living “completely separate lives” since 2016.
in clip Pinkett Smith said on an upcoming NBC News primetime special with Hoda Kotb that the couple did not make their separation public until now because they were “not ready yet.”
They were “still figuring out between the two of us how we could build a partnership,” she said.
“How do I present that to people?” she told Kotb. “We didn’t know that.”
Pinkett Smith, 52, and Smith, 55, were married in 1997, but Pinkett Smith said they are not legally divorced.
Their marriage came under scrutiny during the time she was separated.
In July 2020, singer August Alsina revealed that he was in a relationship with Pinkett Smith, and confirmed it during an episode of Red Table Talk with her husband.
“I had a falling out with August,” Pinkett Smith said at the time, explaining that the superstar couple were “going through a very difficult time” at the time of the incident.
Then there was the Oscar slap.
During the 2022 Academy Awards, Smith stormed the stage and slapped presenter Chris Rock after he made a joke about Pinkett Smith being bald. She has alopecia, which causes her hair to fall out.
In a new interview with peoplePinkett Smith opened up about the incident and said, like many others, she initially thought it was a comedic incident between the two.
“I thought, ‘This is a skit.’ I thought, ‘There’s no way Will would hit him,'” she recalled. “It wasn’t until Will started going back to his chair that I realized this wasn’t a skit.”
She told the magazine that as soon as they were alone, she asked Smith, “Are you okay?”
Pinkett Smith told Kotb in an interview that her marriage fell apart because of “a lot of things going on.”
“I think by the time 2016 rolled around, we were both tired of trying,” Pinkett Smith said. “I think we were both still stuck in our own fantasies of what the other person was supposed to be.”
She said she had “promised” Ms Smith that there was never any reason to divorce her, and “I couldn’t break that promise”.
Pinkett Smith reveals more about her marriage, career and childhood in her upcoming memoir, Worthy. This book will be released on October 17th.
