Long before Jada Pinkett Smith dropped the bombshell that she and her Oscar-winning husband Will Smith haven’t been married for over half a decade, we the public were teased the first hint of that revelation way back in 2018.
During a conversation on the Rap Radar podcast in July 2018, Will disclosed the truth about his marital status. At the time we assumed he was referring to his and Jada’s aversion to labels, but in reality, he was subtly informing us of their actual relationship status.
“We don’t even say we’re married anymore. We refer to ourselves as ‘life partners,’ where you get into that space where you realize you are literally with somebody for the rest of your life. There’s no deal breakers. There’s nothing she could do—ever—nothing that would break our relationship. She has my support till death, and it feels so good to get to that space.”
Jada did something similar the month prior in June, sharing in an interview on Sway in the Morning that label or no label, she and Will would always be in each other’s lives. Whether or not they had the official title of husband and wife was no hindrance to that.
“Here’s the thing about Will and I; it’s like, we are family, that’s never going down. It doesn’t matter, all that relationship and what people think, ideas of a husband and a partner and all that, man, whatever, at the end of the day, that’s a man that can rely on me for the rest of his life, period.”
The weight of these comments has been thrown into stark relief following Jada’s exclusive revelation with Hoda Kotb on TODAY in which she unveiled that she and Will have been separated since 2016. In promotion of her upcoming memoir Worthy (set to hit bookshelves on Oct. 17), Jada shared with Hoda that public appearances aside, she and Will have been living separately and divorced in all but name for over seven years.
Yes, despite Will’s incendiary and infamous comment at the 2022 Oscars that Chris Rock keep his “wife’s” name out of his mouth, Will and Jada were not actually husband and wife at the time. The pair have put on the ultimate show for the last seven years, parading their seemingly happy marriage around in public, despite having secretly split up.
In 2020, Jada was caught up in an “entanglement” with family friend and singer August Alsina, with whom Jada was reportedly romantically linked for years, a relationship Will Smith himself even blessed. When Hoda asked Jada why she and Will chose to keep their split private for so long, the 52-year-old actress said it simply came down to not being ready.
“I think just not being ready. Still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in partnership. And in regard to how to we present that to people, you know? And we hadn’t figured that out. “
According to Jada, there wasn’t a root cause for their marriage’s dissolution, but there were a number of signs she couldn’t ignore any longer.
“Why it fractured? That’s a lot of things. And I think by the time we got to 2016 we were just exhausted with trying. I think we were both kind of still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.”
As for why she and Will decided not to make their divorce official — it comes to down honoring the promise they made under the alter all those years ago in 1997.
“I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce. We will work through whatever. And I just haven’t been able to break that promise.”
