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 were “not ready yet.”
They were “still trying to figure out how to partner,” she said.
“How do we present this to people?” she told Kotb. “We hadn’t figured that out.”
Pinkett Smith, 52, and Smith, 55, have been married since 1997. Pinkett Smith said they were not legally divorced.
Their marriage was put to the test during the time they lived apart.
In July 2020, singer August Alsina announced that he was in a romantic relationship with Pinkett Smith, which she confirmed in an episode with her husband on “Red Table Talk.”
“I got involved 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 came about.
Then there was the slap in the face at the Oscars.
During the 2022 Academy Awards, Smith stormed the stage and slapped host Chris Rock after he made a joke about Pinkett Smith being bald. She suffers from alopecia, which has caused hair loss.
In a new interview with People, Pinkett Smith opened up about the incident and, like many other people, said she initially thought it was a comedic episode between the two men.
“I thought, ‘This is a sketch.’ I thought, ‘There’s no way Will can beat him,'” she recalls. “It wasn’t until Will walked back to his chair that I even realized it wasn’t a skit.”
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 just exhausted from trying,” Pinkett Smith said. “I think we were both still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.”
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.