An honest approach. Over the years, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith have been transparent about their evolving marriage and the bumps in the road.
Smith and Pinkett Smith’s relationship made waves in June 2020 when August Alsina claimed that he was recently in a relationship with the Scream 2 star. At the time, the singer noted that Smith was aware of his connection with his wife.
One month later, the Girls Trip actress addressed her “entanglement” with Alsina. “Yes, it was a relationship, absolutely. I was in a lot of pain, and I was very broken,” she revealed on Red Table Talk in July 2020. “Now in the process of that relationship, I definitely realized that you can’t find happiness outside of yourself.”
The Suicide Squad star, who joined Pinkett Smith on the talk show, also confirmed that they were through a brief separation. “I was done with your ass. I was done with you,” he joked at the time, referring to a split in 2015. “Marriages have that, though. We decided that we were going to separate for a period of time, and you go figure out how to make yourself happy and I’ll try to figure out how to make myself happy. I really felt like we could be over.”
That same month, a source exclusively told Us Weekly that discussing their issues in an open forum brought the couple to a better place.
“The Smiths as a family are really glad they addressed this and put everything out in the open,” the insider explained. “Will and Jada, at the end of the day, are like a normal couple who just happen to be glorified because they’re famous. They have fought. They have reconciled. At the end of the day, they do love each other.”
The Philadelphia native later elaborated on when monogamy was explored in his marriage. “Jada never believed in conventional marriage … Jada had family members that had an unconventional relationship,” Smith, who has been married to Pinkett Smith since 1997, told GQ in September 2021. “So she grew up in a way that was very different than how I grew up.”
Smith noted that their expectations in their relationship changed as they got older. “There were significant endless discussions about, what is relational perfection?” he continued. “And for the large part of our relationship, monogamy was what we chose, not thinking of monogamy as the only relational perfection.”
Amid further speculation of cheating, Smith shut down assumptions from people who weren’t familiar with the couple. “Never. There’s never been infidelity in our marriage,” he said on CBS Sunday Morning, noting that the pair “talk about everything” with one another. “And we have never surprised one another with anything ever.”
For the I am Legend star, communication helped led him and Pinkett Smith to a better place.
“But the heart and soul of our union was then, and is still today, intense, luminescent conversation. Even to the writing of this very sentence, if Jada and I begin a conversation, it is a minimum two-hour endeavor. And it is not uncommon that we talk for five or six hours at a stretch,” he wrote in his memoir, which was released in November 2021. “Our joy of pondering and pursuing the mysteries of the universe, through the mirror of each other’s experience, is unbridled ecstasy. Even in the depths of disagreement, there is nothing in this world that either of us more cherishes or enjoys than the opportunity to grow and learn from each other through passionate communication.”
In March 2022, Smith raised eyebrows when he slapped Chris Rock during the 94th annual Academy Awards after Rock joked about Pinkett Smith’s shaved head. The Hitch star hit Rock before yelling, “Keep my wife’s name out your f—king mouth.”
The incident had Hollywood divided, with some stars questioning Smith’s reaction and others defending him for standing up for his wife. Pinkett Smith, for her part, rolled her eyes at Rock’s joke after being candid about her alopecia diagnosis since 2018.
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