Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed that she and husband Will Smith have secretly been separated for the last seven years – as she admitted that the pair, who tied the knot in 1997, are still trying to ‘figure out’ what the future of their marriage looks like.
The 52-year-old shared the shock news about her relationship in a new interview with People – before also opening up about their situation in more detail in a sit-down with NBC News this morning.
Speaking to Hoda Kotb on the Today show, Jada explained why her marriage to Will, 55, broke down, divulging: ‘By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying. I think we were both still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.’
Jada – who admitted in 2020 that she’d had an affair with singer August Alsina – said she considered a legal divorce but could never go through with it, candidly revealing that she made a ‘promise’ to her husband that she would never give him a ‘reason’ to get divorced.
‘I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce,’ she continued. ‘We will work through whatever. And I just haven’t been able to break that promise.’
‘But you still live separately?’ Hoda probed, prompting Jada to confirm ‘we live separately’.
Speaking to People, Jada admitted the pair were in fact living separately when her husband slapped comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars in 2022, when he strode onto the stage in a burst of fury over a joke that had been made about his wife’s bald hairstyle.
She noted that no permanent decisions have been made about the future of her marriage, explaining that she and Will are ‘still figuring it out’.
‘We’ve been doing some really heavy-duty work together,’ she said. ‘We just got deep love for each other and we are going to figure out what that looks like.’
Jada went on to praise her children – Jaden, 25, Willow, 22, and Trey, 30, who is Will’s son from a previous relationship – for standing by her during this rocky time in her relationship.
‘My children, they’re little gurus. They’ve taught me a deep sense of self-acceptance,’ she said. ‘They love every part of me. The level of love, unconditional love that they have for me and their dad.
‘And it’s one thing to want to be the person that gives that unconditional love. And then there’s, to be the recipient of that.’
Will and Jada’s separation will come as a shock to many given they have denied the gossip about their marriage and kept up the appearance of a committed married couple.
At the 94th Academy Awards, Will famously slapped comedian Chris when he joked that Jada looked like ‘G.I. Jane’ because of her bald head when she had recently revealed that was suffering from alopecia.
Clearly enraged by the jab, the Fresh Prince star stormed the stage and proceeded to slap Chris for making the joke.
The shocking assault occurred moments before he took home the Best Actor gong for his portrayal of tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams’s devoted father in the film King Richard.
In a rambling acceptance speech, a sobbing Smith admitted that ‘love makes you do crazy things’ – but tellingly failed to apologize to Chris for his assault.
In July 2020, Jada admitted she did have an affair with singer August, 31, while married to Will during a bombshell tell-all confessional.
The actress first publicly revealed her affair when she sat down with her estranged husband for an intimate conversation on her Facebook show, Red Table Talk, where she said she developed a friendship with August four years prior, however insisted revealed she and Will were going through a ‘difficult time’ and had ‘basically broken up’.
At the time, Jada famously referred to the years-long affair with R&B singer as an ‘entanglement’ which now features as a reference in August’s track ‘Shake the World’.
The shocking confessional came after both actors initially denied August’s claims that Will gave him his blessing to have a relationship with Jada.
The bombshell Today show interview comes amid Jada’s ongoing publicity tour for her new book, which has seen her opening up about a number of difficult topics – including her battle with ‘depression’ and ‘despair’, which began when she turned 40.
‘On paper,’ it all looked grand – I had the beautiful family, the superstar husband, the lavish lifestyle, fame and fortune,’ she writes in the book, according to an excerpt obtained by People.
However, she says that, behind the scenes, ‘I’d fallen into despair and wanted to be on this earth less and less.’
Jada’s marriage to Will came under blistering public scrutiny in 2020, when she interviewed him on her chat show Red Table Talk about an ‘entanglement’ she had four years earlier with a much younger man.
The relationship gained even more notoriety last year when Will slapped Chris at the Oscars for making a bald joke about Jada that visibly offended her.
Jada was the product of a tempestuous childhood in Baltimore, scarred by her mother’s heroin addiction and father’s alcoholism.
Against the backdrop of her turbulent home life, Jada grew to become a drug dealer by the time she befriended Tupac Shakur in high school.
In her autobiography, she writes that she discovered during adulthood that she was suffering from ‘complex trauma with PTSD and dissociation.’
However, during her period of intense distress in the year of her 40th birthday, she had yet to receive an official diagnosis and was left struggling to get to grips with her trauma.
The excerpt begins with her driving through Ojai, California heading to a meeting with a mysterious ‘Medicine Woman’ she hopes will alleviate her issues.
‘Don’t be afraid, I tell myself. You are in peaceful, beautiful Ojai. Why are you so scared?’ she wrote. ‘Because, I answer right back, what if THIS actually kills me?’
Then, she added: ‘Three months earlier, in the wake of my fortieth birthday, my biggest worry was Well, what if it DOESN’T?’
Pulling back the veil of her glittering public persona, Jada recalled: ‘For two decades, I had been putting on a good face, going with the flow, telling everyone I was okay. Yet underneath, bouts of depression and overwhelming hopelessness had smoldered until they turned into raging hellfire in my broken heart.
‘Unwelcome feelings – of not deserving love – made it harder to understand the disconnect between the so-called perfect life I had achieved and the well of loss I carried with me. Therapy helped up to a point. It got me to 40! But to what end?’
Her solace came from her children Jaden and Willow as well as Will’s son Trey, 30, by his first wife Sheree Zampino – but even they were not enough.
‘I would later be diagnosed and informed that I suffer from complex trauma with PTSD and dissociation, but without this guidepost, I was a chronic mess with no fix, no possibility to heal,’ Jada wrote in her book.
‘Every morning, waking up was like walking the plank of doom – could I make it to four p.m.? If I could, I had survived the day.’
She remembered: ‘I always wanted to sleep, but I never slept well. My children could put a smile on my face and were my only motivation to keep me going, but more and more, I could feel myself losing my grip of connection to them.’
Her ennui had descended on her despite her ‘checking off boxes meant to define being enough to deserve ‘having it all,” but that had ultimately not had not delivered the gifts that had been promised.’
She wrote that she had ‘followed the rules…the rules we’re told to follow. You work hard, make sacrifices for those you love. The rules tell you: Be a doting mother and a doting wife, do the work required, and life turns into paradise. NOPE. A loving relationship, harmony, peace…that happiness had yet to be delivered.’
Jada acknowledged: ‘On paper, it all looked grand – I had the beautiful family, the superstar husband, the lavish lifestyle, fame and fortune. I had my own career, the freedom and support to pursue creative outlets.
‘The sweetest part was my kids – Jaden, Willow, and my bonus son, Trey – my three favorite people in the world.’