Jada Pinkett Smith Reveals Marriage Separation Details
Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith almost took their separation to the red table.
Days after the Girls Trip actress shared that she and her husband had been separated for seven years, she revealed that she nearly broke the news on Red Table Talk back in 2020 when she and Will opened about her 2016 "entanglement" with August Alsina.
"I was going to go to the red table by myself to talk about the entanglement," Jada told Jay Shetty the Oct. 16 episode of his On Purpose podcast. "But Will decided he wanted to come with and we were going to then tell the world, 'Hey, we haven't been together and this happened during that time.'"
She continued, "Well when we got to the table, Will wasn't ready. He wasn't ready for the world to know that. I had to respect that—well I didn't have to, but I wanted to."
Jada noted that this Red Table Talk episode, during which she and Will publicly addressed the affair allegations, had been her chance to walk back the "narrative of allowing myself to be portrayed as an adulteress, as someone that had betrayed Will when that wasn't the case."
photosWill Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's Wildest Quotes About Each Other
But when the moment came, she decided to respect the wish of her partner.
"I was ready to let go of the persona I had created around myself," she continued. "That had put me in a golden cage. So I had to stay on my journey, I had to stay on my path while also respecting that Will wasn't ready. So I said, 'You know what, this is my mess anyway, I'm going to take this heat because guess what? The heat is coming either way.'"
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Jada first provided an update on her and Will's relationship status on Oct. 11, explaining that the pair had been separated for years—including the 2022 Oscars ceremony in which the King Richard actor slapped Chris Rock for a joke the comedian made about Jada while hosting the ceremony.
"Why it fractured… that's a lot of things," she recalled to Today's Hoda Kotb. "By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying. I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be."
But despite being separated for so many years, in what Jada referred to as a divorce though "not on paper," she told the NBC anchor the pair still aren't ready to make the split legally binding.
"I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce," she added. "We will work through whatever, and I just haven't been able to break that promise."
To relive Jada and Will's over 25 years together, keep reading.
