Say what? Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed that she and her husband, Will Smith, have been separated since 2016, which includes the time that Will infamously slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony.
In a new clip from her upcoming NBC primetime special with Hoda Kotb (which airs Friday, Oct. 13 at 8/7c), Pinkett Smith confirms that the married couple has lived “completely separate lives” for the past seven years.
Pinkett Smith came clean when asked why they chose to separate rather than divorce. “I think just not being ready yet,” she says in the video. “Still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in [a] partnership, right, and in regards to ‘how do we present that to people,’ you know? And we hadn’t figured that out.”
She continues: “I think 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… 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.”
Pinkett Smith is promoting her new memoir, Worthy, which goes on sale Oct. 17. In the book, she elaborates on the state of her relationship with Smith and even devotes an entire chapter to the slap heard around the world. Per People, Pinkett Smith — like the millions of people watching — also thought it was a joke. “When Chris was still standing afterward,” she writes in “Worthy,” “I believed my observation to be true: ‘Aha — this IS a skit.’”
The now-infamous slap occurred more than two hours into the March 27, 2022, Oscars broadcast after Rock made a GI Jane joke aimed at Jada Pinkett Smith, who is bald and has previously spoken publicly about her hair loss condition, alopecia. Not long after the incident, Smith won the Best Actor award for his work in King Richard and delivered an emotional acceptance speech where he apologized to the Academy and his fellow nominees.
The following day, Smith also extended a public apology to Rock, calling his own behavior “unacceptable and inexcusable.”
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