(CNN) – Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed that she and her husband Will Smith have been living “completely separate lives” since 2016.
In a clip from her upcoming NBC News primetime special with Hoda Kotb, Pinkett Smith said the couple hadn’t previously made their split public because they weren’t “ready” yet.
The woman said they were still trying to figure out “how to be partners,” she said.
“How do we present this to people?” he told Kotb. “We didn’t realize that.”
Pinkett Smith, 52, and Smith, 55, have been married since 1997. Pinkett Smith said they were not legally divorced.
Their marriage came under scrutiny during the time they said they were separated.
In July 2020, singer August Alsina announced that she was in a romantic relationship with Pinkett Smith, which she confirmed in an episode with her husband on “Red Table Talk.”
“I got into trouble with August,” Pinkett Smith said at the time, explaining at the time that the superstar couple was “going through a very difficult time” when it happened.
Then came the slap in the face from the Oscars.
During the 2022 Academy Awards, Smith stormed the stage and slapped host Chris Rock after he made a joke about Pinkett Smith’s bald head. He suffers from alopecia, which causes him to lose his hair.
In a new interview with People, Pinkett Smith opened up about the incident, which she, like many others, initially thought was a comedic episode between the two men.
“I thought, ‘This is a parody.’ I thought, ‘There’s no way Will will beat him,'” he recalled. “It wasn’t until Will went back to his chair that I realized it wasn’t a parody.”
She told the publication that once they were alone, she asked Smith, “Are you OK?”
Pinkett Smith told Kotb during her interview that the marriage fell apart because of “a lot of things.”
“I think by the time we got to 2016 we were both exhausted from the effort,” Pinkett Smith said. “I think we were both still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be,” he added.
She said she “made a promise” that there would never be any reason for her and Smith to divorce, “and I just couldn’t break that promise,” she said.
Pinkett Smith reveals more about her marriage, career and early life in her upcoming memoir, Worthy. The book will be published on October 17th.