WE’RE SEPARATED
THERE has been persistent gossip about an open marriage and they’ve been fighting rumours that their union was in trouble for years now. So when JADA PINKETT SMITH (52) recently laid bare that she and WILL SMITH (55) have been separated since 2016, heads all over the world were being scratched.
Jada made the surprise revelation during an interview with NBC’s Hoda Kotb while promoting her new memoir, Worthy.
“[We’re] still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in partnership and how do we present that to people. We hadn’t figured that out,” Jada said.
“Why it fractured . . . That’s a lot of things. I think by the time we got to 2016, we were too exhausted with trying.”
According to Jada, she was upholding a promise that there would never be a reason for them to get a divorce. The couple wed in 1997.
“We will work through whatever and I just haven’t been able to break that promise.”
Though she doesn’t address the subject in the interview, 2016 was the same year the Girls Trip actress started her affair – which she famously coined an “entanglement” – with singer August Alsina (now 31).
In 2020 Will joined Jada on her Facebook show, Red Table Talk, for an intimate and tearful conversation about the liaison, which happened during a time they had “basically broken up”.
In a new interview with People, the actress also shared that she had initially thought that when Will stormed on stage to wallop comedian CHRIS ROCK at the 2022 Oscars after he made a joke about her, it was all part of a skit.
“I was like, ‘There’s no way that Will hit him’,” she said. “It wasn’t until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realised it wasn’t a skit.”
According to her, she and Will are doing heavy-duty work at the moment. “We just got deep love for each other, and we are going to figure out what that looks like for us.”