In the news
Jada Pinkett Smith says she was “really shocked” when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at last year’s Oscars and shouted at the comedian not to use “my wife’s name.” The cause of her surprise was not so much the slap but the fact that Smith called her his wife— something he hadn’t said in a long time. In her new memoir, Worthy, Pinkett Smith, 52, reveals that the pair had quietly separated in 2016, ending their nearly 20-year marriage. “We were just exhausted with trying” to salvage the “fractured” relationship, the actress said on the Today show. Pinkett Smith added that she and Smith— who share kids Jaden, 25, and Willow, 22—can’t yet bring themselves to complete the divorce paperwork. Smith, 55, has said that the memoir has made him realize his “emotional blindness” toward Pinkett Smith.
Taylor Swift and NFL star Travis Kelce erased any doubts last week about whether they’re dating, making separate cameos on NBC’s Saturday Night Live season premiere before kissing and holding hands at the show’s afterparty until after 4 a.m. Hours later, Kelce, 34, was seen leaving Swift’s Manhattan apartment. Two days earlier, Swift, 33, attended her third Kansas City Chiefs game this season to cheer on Kelce, sitting with his mother, Donna, who was spotted wearing the kind of friendship bracelets that are a staple of Swift’s concerts. Kelce’s brief SNL cameo was in a sketch poking fun at football media’s obsession with the twomonth-old romance.
Oprah Winfrey pitched Sen. Mitt Romney on forming a presidential unity ticket in 2020 to thwart then-President Trump’s re-election bid, according to an upcoming book on the Republican senator. Romney told journalist McKay Coppins that he dismissed the idea, thinking it would inadvertently help Trump. Sources close to Winfrey, a Democrat, say she was never very serious about running. It would have been an unlikely alliance: Winfrey, 69, famously elevated Barack Obama to national prominence ahead of his 2008 presidential campaign and is close with the Obama family; Romney lost to Obama in the 2012 election. Romney, who represents Utah in the Senate, recently said that he will not seek another term.