There’s not many Hollywood couples that can boast a marriage of 27 years and to be in that hallowed crew Will Smith and wife Jada Pinkett Smith have had to weather some pretty extreme ups and downs.
The pair have endured rumours of affairs and divorce, extra-marital relationships, living separately and then, of course that slap at the 2022 Oscars where, startlingly, Will assaulted Chris Rock live on stage after he poked fun at his wife.
After the Oscars slap went down and the world thought Will was officially cancelled Jada used the experience to open up about the complexity of their decades-long union, which she admitted had been put on ice for the six years prior.
Are Will and Jada still married?
Incredibly, Will’s shock assault brought the couple back together
“That moment of the s–t hitting the fan is when you see where you really are,” Jada 53, told You in late 2023.
“After all those years trying to figure out if I would leave Will’s side, it took that slap for me to see I will never leave him. Who knows where our relationship would be if that hadn’t happened?”
Jada showed Will just how much he means to her by going public with him again at the premiere of his film, Bad Boys: Ride or Die in May 2024.
“I have always been blessed that there has never been a time in my life when I didn’t look to the side and have a ride or die right there,” Will later told Entertainment Tonight, adding, “Jada is one of the most gangsta ride-or-dies I’ve ever had.”
Why did Will and Jada separate?
While the pair seem strong today it’s not always been that way and in October, 2023 while publicising her memoir, Worthy, Jada told the Today Show she and Will had been separated since 2016.
While it isn’t “a divorce on paper,” she said they were “exhausted with trying” to work out their relationship.
Until that point they had never publicly addressed the issue and continued to work out how they could stay in partnership.
She said that she “made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce,” and that they “will work through … whatever.”
Does Will Smith have another wife?
He doesn’t now but Will has been married before and has a son, Trey, with actress Sheree Zampino.
The pair were divorced in 1995 but Zampino has reportedly maintained a friendship with both Will Jada over the years.
How did Will and Jada meet?
The couple first met in 1994 on the set of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, when Jada auditioned for the role of his onscreen girlfriend, Lisa Wilke.
Although she didn’t get the part and Will was married to actress Sheree Zampino at the time there was an instant connection.
Once he and Zampino split, Will called Jada and asked if she was seeing anybody. When she said no, he replied, “Cool. You’re seeing me now.”
The pair went on to marry on New Year’s Eve 1997 when Jada was three months pregnant with their first child. Jaden Smith was born in July 1998 and they went on to have Willow in October 2000.
Rumours of affairs
In August 2011 the rumour mill was in full swing with stories of Jada hooking up with Marc Anthony.
In an unprecedented move by the couple they released a statement to People magazine denying any affair or potential breakdown of their relationship.
“Although we are reluctant to respond to these types of press reports, the rumours circulating about our relationship are completely false. We are still together, and our marriage is intact,” it said.
So that was that.
Do Will and Jada have an open relationship?
Well, it was until 2013 when tongues started wagging again after a comment by Jada suggested the pair were in an open relationship (she’d said Will can do “whatever he wants.”) She was forced to clarify, although the clarification still wasn’t entirely clear.
“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,” Jada wrote on Facebook.
The pair were also driven to deny divorce rumours in 2015, that they were swingers in 2017 and then, later that year, there was August Alsina.
What happened between Jada Pinkett Smith and August Alsina?
Jada and R&B singer Alsina attended the 2017 BET Awards together and people were interested.
It was another three years before any confirmation of what happened between them came out though and in June 2020 Alsina claimed in an interview with American radio host, Angela Yee that he and Jada dated while she was married.
Jada came out later to agree she had an “entanglement” with the singer but that she and Will were separated at the time.
“We decided that we were going to separate for a period of time,” Will said during an episode of Red Table Talk with Jada adding: “I got into a different kind of entanglement with August.…Yes, it was a relationship, absolutely.”
Over the years both Will and Jada have discussed how hard having a successful relationship is but emphasised that they are both in it for the long haul.
“It’s hard…The thing Will and I talk about a lot is the journey,” Jada revealed in a 2021 episode of Red Table Talk. “We started in this at a very young age, 22 years old.”
In his memoir Will also opened up about the difficulties talking about a time several years into their relationship.
“Neither of us wanted a divorce; we knew we loved each other, and some aspects of our union were magical. But the structure of the life that we had established was strangling both of us,” he wrote.
At the end of the day they’ve stuck it out though and, as a source told US Weekly in 2020:
“Will and Jada…are like a normal couple who just happen to be glorified because they’re famous. They have fought. They have reconciled. At the end of the day, they do love each other.”
Want more celebrity news? Head to the WHO website
