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Jada Pinkett Smith Says She And Will Have Been Separated For Seven Years

Jada Pinkett Smith has said she and Will Smith have been separated for seven years.
Credit: Today & Alamy

Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed that she and Will Smith have been separated for seven years.

The Matrix actress, 52, married the Men In Black actor, 55, in 1997 after first meeting in 1994.

While they have been married for more than 25 years, their relationship has been in the spotlight for both good and bad reasons.

Now, Pinkett Smith has dropped a fresh bombshell about their marriage.

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In an exclusive interview with Today, she revealed that she and her husband have lived ‘completely different’ lives since 2016 and that they are no longer romantically together.

“It was not a divorce on paper, but it was a divorce,” interviewer Hado Kotb says.

Kotb then asks why the couple hadn’t previously addressed their relationship status, to which Pinkett Smith explains: “[It’s] just not being ready yet… Still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in partnership.

“In regards to, how do we present that to people? We hadn’t figured that out.”

The Red Table Talk host then shares what led to their ‘fractured’ marriage.

“Why it fractured… that – that’s a lot of things,” she begins.

“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.”

Pinkett Smith adds that while she has considered a legal divorce, she has never been able to go 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,” she says.

“I just haven’t been able to break that promise.”

In a separate interview with People, the Girls Trip actress opened up publicly for the first time about Smith’s infamous Oscar slap – where he hit Chris Rock on stage after he made a joke about Pinkett Smith’s battle with alopecia.

She – like most people watching – thought the incident was a skit but it wasn’t until ‘Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realised it wasn’t a skit’.

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.
Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed that she and Will Smith have been separated since 2016. Credit: Alamy

She mentioned once again that the pair had been separated for six years, but have started to work on things following the incident at the Oscars.

“We’re still figuring it out,” she explains.

“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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Elsewhere in her interview with People, she spoke about the first time she and the I Am Legend actor first hooked up.

Shortly after his divorce from Sheree Zampino – with whom he shares his oldest son Trey Smith – he rang Pinkett Smith and asked who she was dating.

When she responded that she was single, he apparently said: “Well, you’re going out with me now.”

“Can you believe I fell for that?” she said in the interview.

Shortly after getting married, they welcomed their two children Jaden, 25, and Willow, 22.

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Written by Rosario Monachino

Rosario is a former content editor at IGV who specialized in film, TV, and entertainment news. He has a degree in English and Film from the University of Salford and a master's in Journalism from Liverpool John Moores University.