Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Chris Rock are regrettably back in style. You’re not dreaming this. It isn’t—at least not solely—related to the global 2022 slap that everyone is talking about. In an upcoming interview with Today’s Hoda Kotb, Jada makes the shocking admission that she and Will haven’t been together since 2016. The clip was made available by NBC on Wednesday. Even though it doesn’t appear like it will have any immediate effects, this news has significant historical ramifications and throws new light on many of the couple’s earlier events, including the iconic slapping situation. What this most recent storyline twist means for one of Hollywood’s biggest staples is attempted to be explained to you below.
Though it appears we are not, I truly, really wish we were! It’s a burden enough that people constantly talk about this ridiculously publicized marriage, but as a professional, I feel obligated to update you from the front lines of this Hollywood romance that keeps coming up in the media every few years.
Taking up the mantle from Slate’s Rachelle Hampton, who has covered the Smiths for years and rightfully dubbed them the “goofy uncle and bougie aunt of Black celebrity culture,” is all I’m doing. Their remarkable longevity in the histories of Famous Black Shenanigans and Famous Black Aspirations is testament to this.
Now, let’s get into Jada’s most recent Lipton leak, which starts with a video clip from an upcoming Friday night prime-time NBC special that was released on Wednesday. In this clip, Jada—who is promoting her memoir Worthy, which hits stores on October 17—reveals to Hoda Kotb that she and Will aren’t technically divorced, but have been separated since 2016. That’s seven years apart for the people in the room who struggle with numbers. Between the two, a lot has transpired over the past seven years.
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Ring, ring, ring! Given the additional facts, that scandal is undoubtedly one of the largest ones that is being reexamined. For those of us who are cursed, you may remember when R&B artist August Alsina revealed in 2020 that he had dated the presumed-still-married Jada for several years. In addition to making the term “entanglement” a meme, the disclosure of this presumed affair—which Jada, the queen of obfuscation, hilariously dubbed a “entanglement” when she and Will discussed it on their now-canceled online talk show Red Table Talk—resurrected long-simmering suspicions about the shaky state of Will and Jada’s marriage.
Wait, back up—tell me about these decadeslong rumors. Is that why Will and Jada separated?
Jada simply said, “The relationship broke up for a lot of reasons,” but by 2016, they were “just tired with trying,” too caught up in their “fantasy of what we thought the other person should be,” to Kotb’s inquiry on why their partnership ended.
The two have long been thought to be in a closed marriage; rumors that they were divorcing were suppressed by Jada in 2013 and Will in 2015, respectively (quite a coincidence, given that we now know they would split up a year later). The couple’s choice of the term “life partners” rather than “husband and wife,” which Alsina herself employed to refute the notion that his situationship with Jada was some sort of covert, turbulent affair, did not, however, put an end to these allegations. Will and Jada acknowledged that they were apart at the time of the Alsina connection on the Red Table Talk episode.
However, as Rachelle Hampton correctly noted, their answer to the entire controversy was really a fresh method of dismissing all of the earlier gossip of the breakdown of their too idealized marriage.
Why are we learning about Will and Jada’s protracted split for the first time? If my perception of their relationship status is correct, they have openly lied, right?
Both yes and no. All claims that they are still “together” or “married” are true in theory because they are still legally wedded. Are they blatantly deceptive? Yes, but they aren’t really falsehoods. Jada explains to Kotb that they weren’t ready to announce their split publicly yet, as they were still figuring out “how to be in partnership,” let alone how to disclose their relationship status to others.
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What does this change?
God, nothing at all! Nothing changes about Will and Jada’s public displays of support for one another. In actuality, this is a married couple who has been together for almost 20 years, has a family, and has mastered the art of happily coexisting even when they are not together. Even though they are no longer together, they nevertheless support one another and continue to force people—including myself—to repeatedly learn personal facts about their life against our choice. I have to set Slate’s large safety scoreboard to “zero days since the last Smiths incident,” so pardon me while I go contemplate anything else.