Standing up for love! Nearly one month after Joshua Jackson revealed that his wife, Jodie Turner-Smith, was the one to propose to him before their secret December 2019 nuptials, he is firing back at negative comments the 34-year-old actress has received for bucking traditional gender roles.
“Thank you for giving me the opportunity to give context to this story,” Jackson, 43, told Refinery29 in a Tuesday, August 17 interview. “So I accidentally threw my wife under the bus because that story was told quickly and it didn’t give the full context and holy Jesus, the internet is racist and misogynist.”
The Dr. Death star further detailed Turner-Smith’s romantic proposal during the interview.
“So yes, we were in Nicaragua on a beautiful moonlit night, it could not possibly have been more romantic,” he explained. “And yes, my wife did propose to me and yes, I did say yes, but what I didn’t say in that [Jimmy Fallon] interview [in July] was there was a caveat.”
The Dawson’s Creek alum added that he’s “old school” and insisted that he have the “opportunity” to pop the question, too — after he answered “yes.”
“She has a biological father and a stepdad, who’s the man who raised her,” he told the outlet. “[I said], ‘You have to give me the opportunity to ask both of those men for your hand in marriage, and then, I would like the opportunity to re-propose those to you and do it the old-fashioned way down on bended knee.’ So, that’s actually how the story ended up.”
Jackson also clarified that the couple had two proposals before he shut down the online trolls who didn’t like seeing a woman propose to a man.
“And also for anybody who is freaked out by a woman claiming her own space, shut the f—k up,” he said. “Good God, you cannot believe the things people were leaving my wife on Instagram. She did it. I said ‘yes.’ We’re happy. That’s it. That’s all you need to know.”
Jackson explained that the messages that the Queen & Slim actress received have been a “real education” for him as a white man. “The way people get in her comments and the ignorance and ugliness that comes her way is truly shocking,” he continued. “And it has been a necessary, but an unpleasant education in just the way people relate to Black bodies in general, but Black female bodies in specific. It is not okay. We have a long way to go.”
The Affair alum first recounted their romantic New Year’s Eve proposal during the July 19 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. After Fallon, 46, asked the Fringe alum when he knew he wanted to marry Turner-Smith, he revealed it was the moment he asked him.
“She asked me, yeah,” he told the NBC talk show host. “On New Year’s Eve. We were in Nicaragua. It was very beautiful, incredibly romantic. We were walking down the beach, and she asked me to marry her. There was, like, a preamble. There was a lead-up to it. … I did not know [it was coming], but she was quite adamant, and she was right. This is the best choice I ever made.”
Us Weekly previously confirmed that the pair had tied the knot in December 2019, shortly before they welcomed their daughter in April 2020.
“A whole new world of things has just opened up to me in experiencing fatherhood and this magical, joyful, chaotic, stressful anxiety-inducing love that you did not know you had the capacity for,” he opened up to Us in July about new fatherhood. “It just expands every single day.”
