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Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith have been living “completely separate lives” since 2016.
In a clip from her upcoming NBC News primetime special with Hoda Kotb, Jada revealed that she and Will are still legally married but have been separated for seven years.
“It was not a divorce on paper,” Hoda clarified.
“Right,” Jada responded.
“...but it was a divorce,” Hoda added.
“Divorce,” Jada admitted.
The actress went on to add that the couple, who married in 1997, chose not to share their relationship status with the public because they were "not ready yet."
"[We were] still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in partnership," she said. "In regards to, how do we present that to people? We hadn’t figured that out.” Jada added, “Why it fractured...that — that’s a lot of things ... By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying. I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be,” she says.
Though she considered a legal divorce, Jada admitted that she's never been able to follow through with it.
“I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce. We will work through ... whatever,” Jada says. “I just haven’t been able to break that promise.”
The full primetime special is set to air on Friday (October 13) ahead of Jada's upcoming memoir "Worthy," which is out on October 17. In the memoir, Jada details her marital status as well as the 2022 Oscars incident where Will slapped Chris Rock after he made a joke about her alopecia.
The "Worthy" author wrote that she thought the incident was a "skit" until Will got back in his seat after the slap, according to an excerpt of the book obtained by People.
"It’s not until Will yells from his seat back up at Chris to “keep my wife’s name out your f---in’ mouth,” and then repeats it, that I perceive the gravity of the situation, and that, no, it had not been a skit. 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 s--- . . . I am his wife! happens instantly," Jada writes.
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