Diving into the past. In Will Smith‘s new memoir, Will, which he cowrote with Mark Manson, explored the actor’s life and marriage like never before.
The Bad Boys for Life star, 53, set the scene by recalling the connection that he felt as soon as he started dating Jada Pinkett Smith.
“We fit together so naturally, and our energies combined exponentially in a way that felt like old friends more than new lovers,” Will wrote in the book. “We had an unspoken language, and everything we focused on flourished.”
The rapper and the Red Table Talk cohost, 50, originally met when she auditioned to play his girlfriend on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Jada ended up not getting the role, but the pair started seeing one another not long after.
At the time, Will noted that he was still technically married to Sheree Zampino, which affected his new romance. The exes tied the knot in 1992 and their divorce was finalized in 1995. They share son Trey, who arrived in 1992.
“My divorce from Sheree wasn’t yet final, so Jada and I decided it would be prudent if we kept our relationship under wraps. (We were both pretty famous, and we felt it just wouldn’t have been a great look.),” he revealed. “The blessed yet unintended consequence was that we spent every single moment together, just us. The first three or four months were as wild a romantic whirlwind as our bodies could have possibly handled.”
As Will and Jada’s relationship got more serious, the Ali star explained how the couple found themselves with different views about taking the next step.
“Jada didn’t believe in a conventional marriage, and despised the traditional ceremony. She also had questions about the viability of monogamy as a framework for successful long-term relationships,” Will continued. “Jada wanted to look into my eyes, devote her undying love before God, and then get on with the difficult business of building a live together.”
Will and Jada got married in December 1997, which, according to the Suicide Squad star, was not easy.
“Jada held her ground as long as she could, but pretty soon, the ‘wedding pressure’ became too much. She was in her second trimester, she was tired and uncomfortable, and she didn’t want to argue,” Will explained about his now-wife, with whom he welcomed son Jaden in 1998 and daughter Willow in 2000. “She also couldn’t bear the thought of breaking her mother’s heart, and deep down inside — even though I wasn’t saying it — she knew I wanted a wedding too.”
Through the years, the Oscar nominee and the Girls Trip actress didn’t always see eye to eye which led to a fight that almost ended their marriage. Looking back at those obstacles, Will admitted that communication continues to strengthen their marriage.
“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 recalled in the memoir. “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.”
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