Jada Pinkett Smith reveals she and Will Smith have been separated since 2016; revisits Oscar slap

Jada Pinkett Smith, in a recent interview, disclosed that she and Will Smith have been separated since 2016 as they were exhausted of trying.

The couple, who tied the knot in 1997, decided to keep their separation private until they could find the right way to share their relationship with the public.

‘How do we present that to people? We hadn’t figured that out,’ she said in NBC News special with Hoda Kotb.

Jada also shared that they are not legally divorced yet as they had promised each other that they would work through whatever.

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s marital status attracted attention when singer August Alsina confessed to a romantic involvement with Jada in July 2020, which she acknowledged on 'Red Table Talk'.

‘I got into an entanglement with August,’ Pinkett Smith said, explaining then that she and Will ‘were going through a very difficult time’ when it happened.

In the interview, Jada addressed the Oscar slap, which got Will Smith banned from the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences for 10 years. She shared that initially, she thought it was a skit when Smith walked to the stage after Chris Rock made a joke about her bald head.

Jada said it wasn't until Smith started to walk back to his chair that she realised it wasn't a skit.

‘I thought, ‘This is a skit.’ I was like, ‘There’s no way that Will hit him,’’ she recalled.

‘It wasn’t until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realized it wasn’t a skit,’ she said.

For the unversed, during the 2022 Academy Awards Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, following a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith's alopecia-induced baldness.

Jada Pinkett Smith's forthcoming memoir titled 'Worthy' is scheduled for release on October 17. Readers can expect a deeper explanation of marital life, professional journey, and formative years.

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