Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith’s current relationship status has fans scratching their heads.
While promoting her new memoir, Worthy, Pinkett Smith, 52, dropped the bombshell that she and Smith, 55, had secretly been separated since 2016, six years before Smith infamously slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars. Pinkett Smith is now clarifying that she and Smith “have been working hard” at mending their relationship.
“There’s no divorce on paper,” she told Today host Hoda Kotb on Monday, October 16. “We are working very hard at bringing our relationship together. Back to a life partnership.”
She explained that she has no plans of “finding another great love,” adding, “It’s like we are in a place now that we are in a deep, healing space. And we are really concentrating on healing the relationship between us.”
Pinkett Smith noted that she went into her marriage to Smith with very specific ideas” that ended up being “blocks to me just seeing Will as who he is.” She came to realize that “he can’t be this perfect idealized husband.”
She continued: “I have to be able to accept him for the human that he is. He accepts me for the human that I am, and we want to love each other there.”
One day before Pinkett Smith’s latest update, Smith appeared to react to the endless headlines surrounding their marriage, captioning an Instagram video of himself on a boat, “Notifications off :).”
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air alum also wrote in a statement to The New York Times over the weekend that his estranged wife’s memoir “woke him up,” stating, “When you’ve been with someone for more than half your life, a sort of emotional blindness sets in. And you can all too easily lose your sensitivity to their hidden nuances and subtle beauties.”
Though the couple currently live apart, Pinkett Smith stated to Kotb earlier this month that they are “still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in a partnership” and have yet to figure out how to “present that to people.”
One year after tying the knot, the couple welcomed their son, Jaden, 25, in 1998, followed by daughter Willow, 22, in 2000. The pair also coparent Smith’s son Trey, 30, whom he shares with ex-wife Sheree Zampino.
Amid many relationship ups and downs over the years, singer August Alsina claimed in July 2020 that he had a fling with Pinkett Smith that was granted Smith’s approval. Though she initially denied the musician’s claims, Pinkett Smith revealed the “entanglement” took place in 2015.
“We decided we were going to separate for a period of time and you go figure out how to make yourself happy and I’ll figure out how to make myself happy,” Smith explained on a July 2020 episode of his wife’s former Facebook Watch series, Red Table Talk. “I really felt like we could be over.”
