Jada Pinkett Smith opens up about learning to love Will ‘beyond the title of husband’

One of the most intriguing themes of Jada Pinkett Smith’s new memoir Worthy is her understanding of titles. Father, daughter, friend. Husband. Not only how these small words can signifiy bonds of the greatest magnitude, but how they can cast the person behind them into the shade. How they can “make one blind to love”.

Seated opposite Broadway star Cynthia Erivo at London’s Southbank Centre, where the actors were deep in conversation on Sunday (29 October), Jada was unpacking her 400-page meditation on love, loss, growth, and heartache.

During this fireside chat, punctured by affirmations and mantras, the 52-year-old repeatedly returned to the idea of titles and how they constrain our understanding of the person in front of us.

The first time she brought it up, Jada was reflecting on the bond with her father, who struggled with addiction. The final time, she was talking about her separation from Hollywood superstar, and her husband of nearly 20 years, Will Smith.

Jada delivered the news that she and Will have been separated since 2016, revealing that they’re living “completely separate lives”, in a bombshell interview with NBC’s Hoda Kotb earlier this month. In front of the packed Queen Elizabeth Hall, she clarified that though their separation isn’t a “divorce on paper”, they had become “exhausted with trying” to work on their relationship over time.

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

Referring to media reports about her and Will’s marriage, and how people have misunderstood “my communication” about it, Jada on Sunday said: “Even with all this craziness going on, people misunderstanding my communication about my relationship with Will, one of the biggest lessons [I’ve had] and why Will is such a guru for me is because I’ve had to learn to love him unconditionally.”

She continued: “I’ve had to learn to love him beyond the title of ‘husband’ and all the expectations and all the romanticism that comes with that, and learn to love him as he is – with it all. With his bright light, and the shadow, and love him right there. He did not come to this Earth just to be my husband.”

The first time Jada had this realisation about a loved one, that they were so much more than the titles they acquired, was after her father Robsol Pinkett Smith, who grappled with a drug and alcohol addiction, “fell off the wagon” and died from an overdose in 2010.

“It was the first time that I recognised how titles can make one blind to love,” she said. “Because he couldn’t show up and be the father I needed him, I wanted to write him off for that. Versus being able to see that Robsol was born for his destiny, his fate. He was not born just to be my father. I couldn’t see him past the title he wasn’t showing up for.”

Describing herself as the “blessed child of two addicts” in Worthy, Jada’s early life in Baltimore, Maryland, was marked by personal upheaval and trauma – including living with a mother who suffered a 20-year heroin addiction.

“Even today, it’s difficult for me to embrace that idea of trauma,” Jada confessed, during Sunday’s event. “Because I wasn’t aware of how certain situations I had encountered had impacted me. Like having a gun pulled on you was normal; stepping away alive was not.”

In a moment of vulnerability, Jada revealed “I hadn’t planned for 40”, as she opened up about her difficulties with mental health, She revealed her struggle began when she was diagnosed with clinical depression at 21 – and revisited her 40th year when she experienced suicidal thoughts.

Not only was she thinking about suicide, she was actively planning it in her head, she told the audience. Where she would go, how she would do it. She felt “inherently broken” despite having the perfect life, with the mother-of-two adding “I was just trying to make it to 4pm” every day.

It was during this time that Jada first learned about ayahuasca, the plant-based psychoactive native to south America, and decided “I need that” to help overcome her struggles.

“The universe, within a month, opened up an ayahuasca ceremony for me,” she said. “And I had four nights, excruciating nights, but I left that ceremony and I never thought about [suicide] again.”

Jada offers further insight into her complicated relationship with Will – including their decision to “lovably uncouple” in 2016 – in her boo.

Recalling the turmoil the singer-songwriter experienced around her 40th birthday, she writes: “Adding to my distress, Will and I weren’t in a good place and hadn’t been for a while.

“I couldn’t make it right no matter how hard I tried. We couldn’t hear or see each other – at all. Confiding in my close friends seemed unfair to them, and to Will and me,” she says.

She also takes the opportunity to deny rumours that have dogged her and Will’s relationship, including that “Will and I were swingers (or that we were both gay and playing as each other’s beards, or that we were sleeping with whomever we chose to, whenever we chose to)”.

Elsewhere, Jada describes the moment they “decided to separate in every way except legally”, explaining: “For us, what mattered most was mutual agreement and informing the children of our separation. We would remain family-strong, not lose our friendship and maintain our policy of complete transparency – ie no secrets about what we were doing and whom we were doing it with.”

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