Did Jada Pinkett Smith almost end up with Carlton instead of Will? The actress claimed she once went on a date with Alfonso Ribeiro, but her husband Will Smith’s former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air costar remembers things a little differently.
“I actually think I dated Alfonso,” the 47-year-old said on the Monday, October 22, episode of her Facebook Watch series Red Table Talk. “I think I went one date together.”
Smith, 50, added: “And he, like, took you on a motorcycle or something.”
“My memory is … I dated a lot of people, but we went on one date,” Pinkett Smith explained.
After the episode was released, Ribeiro, 47, tweeted his side of the story.
“Sorry Jada. Your memory is a little off,” he wrote on Monday. “We went to lunch with your family when we both guest starred on A Different World the year before you became a regular.”
Pinkett Smith laughed off the situation, replying, “my fault Alf… I thought it was a date.” She added a laughing emoji and heart emoji.
Smith and Ribeiro costarred on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air from 1990 to 1996. The Aladdin star married Pinkett Smith in 1997, three years after they met when she auditioned for the NBC sitcom. The duo opened up about seeing each other for the first time during Monday’s episode of Red Table Talk.
“The first time I met you was at Fresh Prince, when I came to audition,” the Girls Trip star explained. “I think I was 19 and they told me I was too short. But you were there.”
Smith added: “When I saw you on Different World, it was that thing and I don’t know what it is, the bell rings. And I knew that there was something in our energy that would be magic.”
Despite the instant connection between them, the pair clarified that nothing happened until after his relationship with then-wife Sheree Zampino ended.
“We did not have an affair while he was married,” Pinkett Smith said. “Let’s be clear about that.”
“Not at all, not at all,” said Smith, who split from Zampino in 1995. “I read something when we first got together that the most successful men in history have been married. And for me, I knew that I would squander my life if I was running around. The way my mind works, I can only excel for a woman.”
