Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed she’s been secretly separated from Will Smith for the past seven years.
Ahead of her upcoming memoir Worthy, Jada, who has been married to Will since 1997, shared that the couple have been living separately since 2016 in an interview with NBC’s Today.
Speaking about the reason behind the split, Jada said: “I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.”
She explained that they had considered divorcing but she hasn’t been able to go through with it, adding: “I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce. We will work through… whatever. I just haven’t been able to break that promise.”
Jada and Will have two children together, Jaden and Willow Smith. Will also has a son, Trey, from his previous marriage with ex-wife Sheree Zampino.
Speaking about her marriage in a separate interview with People, Jada said they were still “figuring it out”.
“We’ve been doing some really heavy-duty work together,” Jada said. “We just got deep love for each other and we are going to figure out what that looks like for us.”
Will previously described their relationship as an “open marriage” in an interview with GQ in 2021, saying they were “both miserable” prior to the change.
“Jada never believed in conventional marriage,” Will said. “Jada had family members that had an unconventional relationship. So she grew up in a way that was very different than how I grew up.
“There were significant endless discussions about, what is relational perfection? What is the perfect way to interact as a couple? And for the large part of our relationship, monogamy was what we chose, not thinking of monogamy as the only relational perfection.
“We have given each other trust and freedom, with the belief that everybody has to find their own way. And marriage for us can’t be a prison.”
Elsewhere in the interview with People, Jada addressed the incident at the 2022 Oscars where her husband Will slapped Chris Rock onstage, explaining how she initially thought it was 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.”
Following the incident, Will apologised on numerous occasions and resigned from the Academy. He was later banned from all Academy events for 10 years.