This is one of those pieces of news that’s both surprising and not at all surprising at the same time.
The Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith relationship saga has been a tumultuous one, especially in recent years. The celebrity couple got married back in 1997, and various issues that have come up in the last decade have made the relationship appear to be rocky from the outside looking in.
It seemed like Will Smith was always ready to publicly defend Jada, and when she wouldn’t do the same for him in interviews, people were very bothered by it. But after hearing this new information straight from Jada Pinkett Smith, all of the controversy and social media outrage makes a lot of sense.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Pinkett Smith revealed that Will and her are still “officially” and “technically” together, though they decided to mutually and “unofficially” split back in 2016.
NBC decided to sit down with her for a prime-time interview to speak about some of the things that Jada covers in her upcoming memoir Worthy, which releases October 17th.
The always professional Hoda Kotb was tasked with interviewing Pinkett Smith, and the one big part of the interview that is circulating all over social media is the bombshell that came from one of Hoda’s lengthy questions:
“There are so many surprising things in the book, but the thing that surprised me the most, that I actually had to re-read it, because I said ‘is this true?’
In 2016, you and Will decided that you were going to live completely separate lives. It was not a divorce on paper, but it was a divorce. So from the year 2016, which is seven years ago now, y’all have been apart.”
Pinkett Smith nodded along with all of the questions, and confirmed that everything that Hoda Kotb was saying was true.
Take a look:
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
So Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith haven’t been “together” since 2016? What is something big that happened in between now and then that involved the two of them? Oh, that’s right…
Will Smith SLAPPED comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars for making a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith. That was a pretty controversial moment, but could partially be explained by saying:
“You don’t speak about another man’s wife like that right in front of him.”
Or, if you want to directly quote Will Smith himself:
“Keep my wife’s name out your f**king mouth.”
Now though, what is the argument? Will Smith assaulted another man because he insulted a woman that he was fake married to?
All this really does is open back up the case of the “Slap Heard Round The World,” and I honestly still can’t believe that this happened and played out on live national television:
