Jada Pinkett Smith Reveals She and Will Smith Have Lived Separate Lives Since 2016

Hilary Lewis
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Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed that she and husband Will Smith have been living separate lives since 2016.

The actress makes the revelation in her new memoir, Worthy, and discussed the status of her relationship, noting that the pair aren’t technically divorced and aren’t planning to take that legal step, in a clip from an interview with Hoda Kotb that aired on Wednesday’s Today show.

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However, as Pinkett Smith confirmed to Kotb, the separation was essentially a “divorce” as she and Smith are no longer romantically together.

Smith and Pinkett Smith were married in 1997 and have two children, Jaden and Willow. Smith has another son, Trey, from his previous marriage to Sheree Zampino.

As for why the pair didn’t share this news sooner, including when they opened up about Pinkett Smith’s “entanglement” with August Alsina and amid the infamous 2022 Oscars slap, where Smith referred to Pinkett Smith as his “wife,” Pinkett Smith says they weren’t “ready yet.”

“[We were] still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in partnership, right, and in regards to how do we present that to people,” she said. “And we hadn’t figured that out.”

And as to what happened to cause the relationship to “fracture,” as Kotb put it, Pinkett Smith teased “that’s a lot of things.”

“I think by the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying,” she added. “I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.”

Pinkett Smith considered getting a legal divorce but, she told Kotb, “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.”

Still, she confirmed to Kotb, the pair “live separately.”

Pinkett Smith also spoke to People magazine about her relationship with Smith in a cover story out Wednesday, saying that the couple are “still figuring it out,” amid the separation.

“We’ve been doing some really heavy-duty work together,” she added. “We just got deep love for each other and we are going to figure out what that looks like for us.”

During a second clip released ahead of the interview, Pinkett Smith provided more context to her reaction the night of the slap, putting her relationship with Will at the time in clearer perspective.

“First of all, I’m really shocked, because mind you, I’m not there. We haven’t called each other husband and wife in a long time,” she told Kotb, recalling being confused about him calling her “wife” and thinking, “I’m really worried for Will because I don’t know what’s going on.” She also said her eye roll reaction was “about the fact that there could be a jab at alopecia.”

During a headline-making Red Table Talk discussion in 2020, Smith and Pinkett Smith discussed her “entanglement,” as she called it, with Alsina, that began roughly four-and-a-half years prior and revealed that she and Smith had been going through “a very difficult time.”

“I was done with your ass,” Smith said in the episode.

“Yeah, you kicked me to the curb,” Pinkett Smith replied. “We broke up.”

“We decided we were going to separate for a period of time and you go figure out how to make yourself happy and I go figure out how to make myself happy,” he said.

She noted though that at the time the separation was “indefinite,” but they both agreed they “were over.”

Still, the conversation made it seem like this separation was in the past.

In the People cover story, Pinkett Smith also shares her thoughts about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars after Rock made a joke about her shaved head. (Pinkett Smith suffers from alopecia.)

“I thought, ‘This is a skit.’ I was like, ‘There’s no way that Will hit him,'” Pinkett Smith said she thought at the time, wondering, like many viewers, if this wasn’t a scripted moment. “It wasn’t until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realized it wasn’t a skit.”

The first thing she said to Smith after he returned to his seat was, “Are you okay?”

Pinkett Smith spoke at length about her experience with alopecia, after her diagnosis became a part of the conversation in the wake of the Oscars slap, on another Red Table Talk episode in 2022.

During the conversation she also said of Smith and Rock, “My deepest hope is that these two intelligent, capable men have an opportunity to heal, talk this out and reconcile.”

“The state of the world today, we need them both,” she added. “And we all actually need one another more than ever. Until then, Will and I are continuing to do what we have done for the last 28 years, and that’s keep figuring out this thing called life together. Thank you for listening.”

She also shared a brief message on Instagram shortly after the slap, saying, “this is a season for healing and I’m here for it.”

Smith has apologized repeatedly for slapping Rock but resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which banned him from the Oscars and Academy events for 10 years.

Oct. 13, 6:15 a.m. Updated to include a second clip from Kotb’s interview.

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