Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith have found themselves defending their unconventional relationship on more than one occasion. Here is a complete timeline
US actor Will Smith and his wife actress Jada Pinkett Smith arrive for the premiere of Apple Original Films' "Emancipation" at the Regency Village Theatre in Westwood, California, on November 30, 2022. (Photo by Michael Tran / AFP) MICHAEL TRAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The recurring pattern in Will Smtih and Jada Pinkett Smith‘s marriage is one of public defenses and reconciliations — and private rifts and separations. Maybe that’s the way all celebrity relationship struggles should go, but tabloid fodder and the rumors that these stars do choose to comment on often leave a paper trail.
Smith’s latest public defense of his relationship with Pinkett Smith wasn’t actually about the relationship at all — it was just about her. When he unleashed “Keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth” as his final warning before slapping Chris Rock during the 2022 Academy Awards, they had already been separated for six years. But no one knew that until Pinkett Smith made the grand revelation during a recent interview accompanying the release of her memoir.
“I am unclear on the reason why Will is so upset. We had been living separate lives and were there as family, not as husband and wife,” she wrote in the book titled Worthy. During her interview with TODAY, she explained that they hadn’t yet found a way to communicate the state of their relationship to the public, so they chose to keep their separation private.
“I think, just not being ready yet. Still trying to figure out, between the two of us, how to be in partnership,” she explained of the decision to keep their split under wraps. “And in regards to, how do we present that to people. And we hadn’t figured that out.”
Here’s a timeline of all the ways that they have tried to figure out how to present their marriage to the public in the past.
Pinkett Smith, as she revealed in recent years, never intended to marry anyone. But in November 1997, Smith proposed to her, and she accepted before finding out the very next day that she was pregnant with their first child together, Jaden. Three months pregnant and feeling the pressure of being her mother’s only child, she made her way down the aisle, despite her own wishes, on December 31, 1997.
“My first trimester was horrible. I was so upset that I had to have a wedding. I was so pissed. I went crying down the freaking aisle getting married,” Pinkett Smith shared on a past episode of Red Table Talk. They married in her hometown of Baltimore, hosting a private ceremony at a hotel with very little shared about the event to keep the media away.
Smith welcomed his first child, Trey Smith, in 1992 with his first wife, Sheree Zampino. In fact, the actor had met Zampino around the time that he was trying to get his Fresh-Prince of Bel-Air co-star Alfonso Ribeiro to set him up with Pinkett-Smith after meeting her on set when she auditioned for the series. But when Ribeiro connected him with a friend of a friend who could make the official introduction, Smith was more interested in the girl on the friend’s arm.
Smith and Zampino married in 1992 and stayed together for three years before divorcing. Despite not exactly believing in divorce, Smith couldn’t bring himself to stay in a relationship with someone who didn’t love him, he explained on Red Table Talk. Before the ink was even dry on the papers in 1995, he had locked his sights on Pinkett Smith once again. They married two years later, and Jaden Christopher Syre Smith was born in July 1998.
Smith and Pinkett Smith were a picture-perfect Hollywood couple from the start — but their children really sealed the deal. On Halloween 2000, just over two years after welcoming their baby boy, Pinkett Smith gave birth to their second child — and Smith’s first daughter — Willow Camille Reign Smith. “Your dad INSISTED that he have a baby girl and I’m sooooo glad he did,” Pinkett Smith wrote on Instagram on Willow’s 21st birthday. “You are one of the most resilient, courageous, brilliant, insightful, talented, beautiful humans I know.”
In August 2011, tabloids began whispering about a potential split between the couple — with Jennifer Lopez’s then-husband Marc Anthony, at the center of the drama. Pinkett Smith and Anthony had starred as love interests in the medical drama Hawthorne together from 2009 through 2011.
At the time, a representative for Pinkett Smith told People: “All the rumors regarding Marc Anthony and Jada are false. Completely untrue. As for [the reports of a split between] Will and Jada, I’m not commenting on their personal life.”
A representative for Anthony reportedly shared: “We unequivocally deny this. Enough is enough. There are families involved, children involved, friendships involved. This is NOT true.” Both Trey Smith and Jaden Smith defended the couple on social media.
Smith and Pinkett Smith later issued a joint statement addressing the more direct rumors that their marriage was on the rocks and that they had, at that point, been separated for months. “Although we are reluctant to respond to these types of press reports, the rumors circulating about our relationship are completely false,” they told Entertainment Tonight. “We are still together, and our marriage is intact.”
Despite their statement regarding the alleged affair, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith were not as rock solid as they had wanted to convince the public they were. In his 2021 memoir, Will, the actor explained that their marriage simply “wasn’t working” at the time. “We could no longer pretend,” he wrote. “We were both miserable and clearly something had to change.”
During a 2018 episode of Red Table Talk, the actress revealed that while they did break up that year, it was not because of an affair. It was because of the way Smith’s ego took center stage at what was supposed to be her 40th birthday party.
“She’s like, it’s my birthday and she told me that the party was the most ridiculous display of my ego,” Smith said on the episode. “Crushed, right? And to this day I know I was crushed because it was true. It wasn’t a party for her. When she called me on that, that’s when I snapped and that’s the only time you ever heard me snap. I snapped in front of Willow and Willow starts crying and she’s like, ‘Just figure it out.’”
Even two years after those initial affair rumors, Pinkett Smith still found herself having to defend her relationship with Smith to the public. During an appearance on HuffPost Live in April 2013, she explained: “I’ve always told Will, ‘You can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be okay.’ Because at the end of the day, Will is his own man. I’m here as his partner, but he is his own man.”
The statement was, in her opinion, misconstrued as meaning they were in an open relationship that allowed for either of them to do whatever with whomever as long as they were honest with each other about it. That was not what she meant.
“I am addressing this issue because a very important subject has been born from discussions about my statement that may be worthy of addressing,” she later clarified on Facebook. “Here is how I will change my statement … Will and I BOTH can do WHATEVER we want, because we TRUST each other to do so. This does NOT mean we have an open relationship…this means we have a GROWN one.”
Margot Robbie and Smith starred in the 2015 crime-dramedy film Focus, which was shot from September 2013 through December 2013. Somewhere in the middle of that, rumors began circulating online about an alleged on-set affair between Smith, 45 at the time, and Robbie, who was 23. “Been working non-stop, just catching my breath,” the Australian actress tweeted in November 2013. “There’s absolutely no truth to the ridiculous rumor in Star mag.”
During an appearance on Howard Stern’s radio show, Pinkett Smith commented on her marriage. “I’m not the kind of woman that believes that a man’s not gonna be attracted to other women,” she shared at the time. “It’s just not realistic. And just because your man is attracted to another woman doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you. And it doesn’t mean he’s gonna act on it.”
Smith shared a Facebook post in August 2015 shutting down divorce rumors for the umpteenth time.
“Under normal circumstances, I don’t usually respond to foolishness. (Because it’s contagious) But, so many people have extended me their ‘deepest condolences’ that I figured – ‘What the hell… I can be foolish, too,’” he wrote. “So, in the interest of redundant, repetitious, over & over-again-ness… Jada and I are… NOT GETTING A DIVORCE!!!!!!!!!!!!! : -) I promise you all – if I ever decide to divorce my Queen – I SWEAR I’ll tell you myself!”
Pinkett Smith weighed in simply adding: “My king has spoken.”
Smith has said before that he doesn’t believe in divorce, but he’s already been divorced once. Pinkett Smith never wanted to get married in the first place, but she’s been married for more than two decades. The compromises that they have both endured are rooted in the fracturing of their relationship.
While this falls in the middle of the timeline, the separation wouldn’t become public knowledge until October 11, 2023. During an interview with the Today Show, Pinkett Smith explained that they had been quietly separated for almost six years. By 2016, she shared, “We were just exhausted with trying. I think we were still both kind of stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.”
However, between 2016 to today, the couple continued to present themselves as a united front to the public.
During an appearance on Watch What Happens Live, Pinkett Smith addressed the “craziest rumor” she’s heard about herself and Will Smith, which was that they are swingers. “That’s the craziest one. It’s constant,” she said. “And I’m like, ‘Yo, I wish!’”
On the 20th anniversary of their wedding, Smith penned an emotional note on Instagram about what he learned from being married to Pinkett Smith in those two decades. “Love is Like Gardening… I have learned to focus on HELPING you to BLOSSOM into what YOU want to be (into what you were born to be),” he wrote. “Rather than Demanding that you become what my Fragile Ego needs you to be.”
He continued: “I’ve learned to take pleasure in Nourishing YOUR dreams… Rather than wrestling with you to Fulfill my Selfish Needs & Satiate My Insecurities … Happy Anniversary, My Queen! I am forever Devoted to Nurturing your Deepest Truth.”
During a 2018 appearance on Rap Radar, Smith gave perhaps his first hint that his relationship with Pinkett Smith had changed, revealing that the two don’t use the term married anymore. “We refer to ourselves as ‘life partners,’ where you get into that space where you realize you are literally with somebody for the rest of your life,” he explained. “There’s no deal breakers. There’s nothing she could do—ever—nothing that would break our relationship. She has my support till death, and it feels so good to get to that space.”
Pinkett Smith first met musician August Alsina in 2015 when Jaden Smith performed at Wireless Music Festival. Within three years, when he appeared on Red Table Talk, they were familiar enough for her to introduce him as a “dear family friend.”
In the music video for August Alsina’s “Nunya,” the remix of a Kehlani record, his Memoji delivers lyrics about his apparent “entanglement,” as they would later call it, with Pinkett Smith.
“You got me feeling like it was an act, you’re just an actress/Putting on a show ’cause you don’t want the world to know,” he sings on the song. “That you lost a man who loved you all along/Baby, couldn’t we just let this go?” In the video, he is shown texting a number saved as “Koren<3,” which is notably Pinkett Smith’s middle name.
In an interview with Angela Yee, August Alsina said he had given “years” of his life to a romantic relationship with Pinkett Smith. “I actually sat down with Will and had a conversation due to the transformation from their marriage to life partnership that they’ve spoken on several times, not involving romanticism,” he explained. “He gave me his blessing. I totally gave myself to that relationship for years of my life. I truly and really, really, deeply love and have a ton of love for her.”
Representatives for Pinkett Smith denied Alsina’s claims.
Pinkett Smith brought both Smith and August Alsina to Red Table Talk. During the conversation, Pinkett Smith confirmed that she and Alsina did have a romantic relationship that spanned four and a half years, during which she and Smith were separated and thought their marriage might be over. “We were over,” Pinkett Smith shared. “From there, as time went on, I got into a different kind of entanglement with August.”
There, they were also able to clear up the fact that Smith did not actually grant his blessing or permission for Pinkett Smith to enter that relationship. “The only person who can give permission in that particular circumstance is myself,” she said. “But what August was actually trying to communicate — because I could actually see how he would perceive it as permission because we were separated amicably — I think he also wanted to make it clear that he’s not a homewrecker, which he’s not.”
When her relationship with Alsina ended, she reconciled with Smith. “I would definitely say that we tried everything we could to get away from each other, only to realize that that wasn’t possible,” Pinkett Smith said.
During an interview with GQ, Smith detailed his and Pinkett Smith’s less-than-conventional approach to marriage.
“Jada never believed in conventional marriage…Jada had family members that had an unconventional relationship. So she grew up in a way that was very different than how I grew up,” he explained, adding: “There were significant endless discussions about, what is relational perfection? What is the perfect way to interact as a couple? And for the large part of our relationship, monogamy was what we chose, not thinking of monogamy as the only relational perfection.”
He added: “We have given each other trust and freedom, with the belief that everybody has to find their own way. And marriage for us can’t be a prison. And I don’t suggest our road for anybody. I don’t suggest this road for anybody. But the experiences that the freedoms that we’ve given one another and the unconditional support, to me, is the highest definition of love.”
It was the slap heard around the world. After Chris Rock decided to make Pinkett Smith the butt of one of his jokes at the Oscars, Smith decided to put him in his place. “Keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth,” he yelled out to the actor in the stunned auditorium of people — including Pinkett Smith — who were unsure whether they were watching an elaborate skit or not. Shortly after, Smith slapped Rock across the face.
In an excerpt from her book, Pinkett Smith wrote that she hadn’t initially understood “the gravity of the situation,” explaining: “Even so, I am unclear on the reason why Will is so upset. We had been living separate lives and were there as family, not as husband and wife. But when I hear Will yell ‘wife’ in the chaos of the moment, an internal shift of ‘Oh shit . . . I am his wife!’ happens instantly.”
The Smith’s relationship has been bumpier than they ever wanted anyone to believe. During an interview with People surrounding the release of her memoir Worthy, Pinkett Smith explained that she had been separated from Smith for six years prior to the Oscars slap (as noted in the timeline above).
“I’m going to be by his side, but also allow him to have to figure this out for himself,” Pinkett Smith told People about the aftermath of the slap, adding of their marriage: “We’re still figuring it out. We’ve been doing some really heavy-duty work together. We just got deep love for each other and we are going to figure out what that looks like for us.”
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