Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, one of the most high-profile couples in American showbiz, have been living “completely separate” lives since 2016.
On paper, they remain married, but in practice, it’s as if they are divorced, revealed Jada Pinkett Smith in an interview with the NBC network.
An excerpt from this interview with co-presenter Hoda Kotb was broadcast Wednesday morning on the show’s website TODAY. Jada Pinkett Smith will publish the book on October 17 Worthyand it is in this book that she opens up about her separation, which she and her husband kept secret for seven years, because they were “not ready” to talk about it publicly.
PHOTO DANNY MOLOSHOK, INVISION ARCHIVES/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jada Pinkett Smith
“We were still trying to figure out between the two of us, how to be in partnership,” Jada Pinkett Smith said. And the way to present it to people, you know? And we don’t know it yet. »
Jada Pinkett Smith, 52, and Will Smith, 55, both actors, married in 1997. They have always denied separation rumors. In 2020, Jada Pinkett Smith confirmed having had an affair with singer August Alsina while her relationship with Will Smith was “going through a very difficult time”.
And in 2022, during the Oscars gala, Will Smith caused a scandal by violently slapping comedian Chris Rock for a joke about the baldness of Jada Pinkett Smith, suffering from alopecia. “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!” », he shouted.
In an interview with Hoda Kotb, Jada Pinkett Smith confides that her relationship with Will Smith, from whom two children were born, broke down for “several reasons”. “I think at that point in 2016 we were both exhausted from trying,” he said. I think we were both still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be. »
The reason they are not legally divorced is because she once promised herself that there would be no reason for her and Will Smith to divorce, and she has been “unable to break that promise “.