Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith make up one of Hollywood\u2019s longest reigning couples\u2014and also one of its most candid. As an iconic power duo, the Smiths celebrated multiple award wins, raised three kids (Jaden and Willow, as well as Smith\u2019s oldest son, Trey, from his first marriage, to Sheree Zampino), and jumped out of a plane\u2014together. But after walking down the aisle in 1997, they\u2019ve also been the subject of divorce rumors, infidelity gossip, and more.
Now Pinkett Smith has revealed that the pair has been separated since 2016. While promoting her upcoming memoir, Worthy, on the Today show, she shared that, after the \u201centanglement\u201d that first shook their marriage several years ago (more on that below), the duo never actually repaired their romantic relationship. Now Pinkett Smith isn\u2019t shying away from discussing her relationship with Smith\u2014and what this separation really means.
Let\u2019s see how the Smiths\u2019 romance unfolded\u2014then unraveled\u2014plus their most defining moments as husband and wife.
1994: Jada met Will on the set of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
Though the relationship between Smith, 55, and Pinkett Smith, 52, sounds like a story ripped straight from the plot of a romantic comedy, their meet-cute didn\u2019t have a traditional happy ending. They briefly met in 1994 when Pinkett Smith auditioned for a role as Smith\u2019s character\u2019s girlfriend on the \u201990s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Unfortunately, the five-foot actress didn\u2019t get the part because she was too short. Instead, the role went to Nia Long.
Still, despite their drastic height difference, Pinkett Smith would soon become Smith\u2019s leading lady off-screen a few years later. To date, the pair have never appeared in a movie or on a TV show together. However, they have produced films through their joint production company, Overbrook Entertainment.
1995: The Smiths started dating.
During a 2018 appearance on Red Table Talk, Pinkett Smith\u2019s web series, Smith expressed that he was attracted to Pinkett Smith when he later saw her on the college-themed TV series A Different World. \u201cI knew there was something in our energy that would be magic,\u201d he said.
Unfortunately, Smith was married at the time to Zampino, his first wife, and decided not to act on his attraction to Pinkett Smith. Smith later revealed on Red Table Talk that he knew Pinkett Smith was the one after an aha moment he had in a restaurant bathroom while he was on a dinner date with Zampino.
\u201cI had a realization I wasn\u2019t with the person I was supposed to be with,\u201d Smith said. \u201cI was sitting in a stall and I was crying and laughing uncontrollably, and I knew [Jada] was the woman I was supposed to be with, but I was never getting divorced...I went back out, sat down with Sheree and started going back on with my life.\u201d
It wasn\u2019t until Zampino ended things with Smith that he tried to woo the actress. He asked Pinkett Smith if she was \u201cseeing anyone,\u201d and her response was \u201cno.\u201d
\u201cCool, you\u2019re seeing me now,\u201d Smith smoothly told her. From there, Pinkett Smith moved from Baltimore to California, and the two began dating. Smith and Zampino officially divorced in late 1995. Watch the Red Table Talk episode here.
December 1997: Jada and Will got married.
Smith officially asked for his wife\u2019s hand in marriage in November 1997. \u201cOne day we got engaged, and the next day we found out we were pregnant,\u201d Pinkett Smith told People. That\u2019s right; when Pinkett Smith walked down the aisle in a velvet, champagne-colored gown on December 31, 1997, she was three months pregnant with her first child.
The two married in a private ceremony at a hotel in Pinkett Smith\u2019s native city of Baltimore. There were no invitations sent, according to People, because the couple wanted to avoid any potential leaks to the media, which explains why there are very few photos of their big day floating around the Interwebs. But Pinkett Smith posted the above Polaroid snap on Twitter of the pair sharing a New Year\u2019s Eve kiss shortly after saying their \u201cI do\u2019s.\u201d
On Red Table Talk, Pinkett Smith finally opened up about her wedding day, but it wasn\u2019t the fairy tale we all might\u2019ve imagined. \u201cI was so upset that I had to have a wedding,\u201d she remembered. \u201cI was so pissed. I went crying down the freakin\u2019 aisle getting married.\u201d Watch the Red Table Talk episode here.
July 1998: Pinkett Smith gave birth to their son, Jaden Smith.
First came love. Then came marriage, and, well, you know the rest. Pinkett Smith welcomed her first son, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, on July 8, 1998, in a speedy delivery.
\u201cThe doctor said it would take an hour and a half to deliver him,\u201d she told Fit Pregnancy. \u201cI said, \u2018Oh it\u2019s not going to take that long. I\u2019m too anxious to meet this baby.\u2019 It took me 20 minutes to push him out. My mother\u2019s a nurse, and she was in there with me, and she was amazed!\u201d
Jaden quickly followed in his parents\u2019 superstar footsteps, catching the acting bug and inheriting the music gene from his rockstar mother and rapper/actor father. Unlike Pinkett Smith, their son has starred in two movies with his dad: After Earth (2013) and The Pursuit of Happyness (2006). He also released his debut studio album in 2017, Syre, which is taken from his middle name.
October 2000: Their second child, Willow Smith, was born.
Nearly two years later, the Smiths welcomed their daughter, Willow Camille Reign Smith, on October 31, 2000. Smith confirmed his daughter\u2019s conception happened on a drunken trip in Mexico on VH1\u2019s Dear Mama special.
\u201cI\u2019m not gonna be silly,\u201d Smith said during his opening monologue. \u201cI\u2019m here to honor you. Just watching the piece with the kids, it takes me back to when we made them. Can\u2019t help but think about that. It\u2019s just amazing. It\u2019s like you take Jada Pinkett Smith and an obscure town in Mexico and some tequila and you end up with great kids!\u201d
Like her big brother, Willow also became a fixture on the entertainment scene, appearing in the 2007 movie I Am Legend alongside her father. Her first song, \u201cWhip My Hair,\u201d was released in 2010 and thrust her into the spotlight. Later, she began working as a model and co-hosted Red Table Talk with her mother and grandmother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris. Willow still sings, too; she released her fifth solo album, Coping Mechanism, in 2022.
April 2013: Pinkett Smith denied being in an open relationship.
After an interview with HuffPost Live on April 3, 2013, Pinkett Smith\u2019s comments about her marriage raised a few eyebrows.
\u201cI\u2019ve always told Will, \u2018You can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be okay,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cBecause at the end of the day, Will is his own man. I\u2019m here as his partner, but he is his own man. He has to decide who he wants to be, and that\u2019s not for me to do for him. Or vice versa.\u201d
This caused many people to believe she was admitting to being in an open relationship with Smith. Pinkett Smith would later clarify her statement on her personal Facebook account, opening up her intimate post with the question: Open marriage?
\u201cThe statement I made in regard to \u2018Will can do whatever he wants\u2019 has illuminated the need to discuss the relationship between trust and love and how they co-exist,\u201d she wrote. Read the entire statement here.
August 2015: The Smiths confirmed their marriage was rock solid (again).
Because of the way the rumor mill works, people continued to predict that the couple was headed for splitsville. In 2015, Smith was forced to state the obvious again on Facebook: \u201cIn the interest of redundant, repetitious, over & over-again-ness...Jada and I are...NOT GETTING A DIVORCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!\u201d
2016: Pinkett Smith had an \u201centanglement\u201d with August Alsina while she and Smith were separated.
On a revelatory 2020 episode of Red Table Talk, Pinkett Smith shared that she was separated from Smith in 2016 and that she and R&B singer August Alsina were involved in a \u201crelationship\u201d during that period. At the time, she said she and Smith were \u201cover.\u201d
In the episode, Pinkett Smith calmly sat down across from Smith and explained to viewers that Alsina had come into their lives when he was \u201csick\u201d and that it felt good to be able to help him. \u201cI just wanted to feel good; it had been so long since I felt good,\u201d she told viewers about her relationship with Alsina, whom she had been helping as he struggled with addiction. \u201cAnd it was really a joy to just help heal someone. I think that has a lot to do with my codependency.\u201d
\u201cI definitely realized you can\u2019t find happiness outside yourself,\u201d Pinkett Smith added. Smith also revealed that during that dark chapter of their marriage, he wasn\u2019t sure if they\u2019d ever speak again. However, they persevered after a lot of what Will called \u201ctherapizing,\u201d and Jada facing both the \u201cugly\u201d truths about herself and the beautiful ones. \u201cWe came together young, and we were both broken in our own ways, and to be able to make mistakes without the fear of losing your family is so critical,\u201d Will said. Now they have \u201cunconditional love\u201d for each other, they added. Watch the Red Table Talk episode here.
May 2018: Pinkett Smith invited Smith\u2019s ex-wife to Red Table Talk.
On the May 2018 premiere episode, \u201cMotherhood,\u201d of Red Table Talk, Pinkett Smith extended an invitation to an unexpected guest: Smith\u2019s ex-wife, Zampino. The two women were completely respectful toward each other during their frank discussion, speaking candidly about their rocky past and how Zampino\u2019s son with Smith, Trey, led to them becoming friends and a blended family.
July 2018: Smith referred to Pinkett Smith as his \u201clife partner,\u201d not wife.
After being together for more than two decades, the Smiths revealed that they\u2019re well beyond relationship labels and traditional unions, as proven by a conversation Smith had on TIDAL\u2019s Rap Radar podcast in 2018.
\u201cWe don\u2019t even say we\u2019re married anymore,\u201d Smith explained. \u201cWe refer to ourselves as \u2018life partners,\u2019 where you get into that space where you realize you are literally with somebody for the rest of your life. There\u2019s no deal breakers. There\u2019s nothing she could do\u2014ever\u2014nothing that would break our relationship. She has my support till death, and it feels so good to get to that space.\u201d
Pinkett Smith echoed her husband\u2019s sentiments during a 2018 interview on Sway in the Morning. \u201cHere\u2019s the thing about Will and I; it\u2019s like, we are family, that\u2019s never going down,\u201d she said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter, all that relationship and what people think, ideas of a husband and a partner and all that, man, whatever, at the end of the day, that\u2019s a man that can rely on me for the rest of his life, period.\u201d
2019: The couple took their love to higher heights (literally) by skydiving for Smith\u2019s 50th birthday.
As a promise to her husband to do whatever he wanted for his 50th birthday celebration, Pinkett Smith threw caution (and her fear of heights) to the wind and went skydiving in Dubai with her partner of over 22 years. Smith documented the experience on his Facebook Watch series, Will Smith\u2019s Bucket List.
\u201cJada, you know, she\u2019s been the glue of our family, and a mother and a wife,\u201d Smith said during the desert excursion. \u201cOur life can be wildly constricting for her. I think she was going to experience the greatest rush of freedom and exhilaration that she\u2019s ever had in her life.\u201d
April 2019: The Smiths supported each other at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
The Smiths headed to Southern California to celebrate Jaden\u2019s debut at the annual music festival. During Jaden\u2019s electric performance in the first weekend, Willow and family friend Jordyn Woods made a surprise appearance. But the crowd really went wild when his father joined him onstage to perform \u201cIcon\u201d during the weekend two set. Smith documented the entire experience in the desert valley in the YouTube video below.
May 2019: Pinkett Smith revealed how she handles Smith\u2019s female fans in an episode of Red Table Talk.
On May 6, chef and lifestyle guru Ayesha Curry pulled up a chair at the red table to chat about everything from anxiety to groupies. After Curry shared how she deals with women following her husband, Steph Curry, around when he\u2019s traveling on the road, she turned the question back over to Pinkett Smith, who joked about her daughter, Willow, having her back.
\u201cI remember when Willow was like 5 or 6, and one of Will\u2019s costars was in his trailer,\u201d Pinkett Smith said. \u201cAnd she came in there, and she jumped in her father\u2019s lap, and she looked at the costar and she said, \u2018My mother\u2019s going to be here very soon.\u2019 I remember Will telling me the story, and I cracked up.\u201d
Pinkett Smith added: \u201cThere was only, like, one or two times where I might have gotten a little hostile where I felt like people stepped over a boundary and they were disrespectful. I think also you need to have an internal space of confidence. I know who I am, and more important, he knows who I am.\u201d Watch the Red Table Talk episode here.
2020: The Coronavirus pandemic created a new dynamic in the couple\u2019s marriage.
During a Red Table Talk episode titled \u201cHow Your Relationship Can Survive Quarantine,\u201d Pinkett Smith said, \u201cI have to be honest. I think one of the things that I\u2019ve realized is that I don\u2019t know Will at all.\u201d
So how did the couple work through that realization? \u201cThe thing Will and I are learning to do is be friends,\u201d Pinkett Smith elaborated. \u201cYou get into all these ideas of what intimate relationships are supposed to look like, what marriages are supposed to be.\u201d She added: \u201cWill and I are in the process of him taking the time to learn to love himself, me taking the time to learn to love myself, right, and us building a friendship along the way.\u201d Watch the Red Table Talk episode here.
September 2021: Will says marriage \u201ccan\u2019t be a prison.\u201d
In a revealing interview with GQ, Smith told the interviewer that he also had other relationships while Pinkett Smith was dating Alsina. He elaborated on a topic Pinkett Smith has been open about on Red Table Talk: She doesn\u2019t necessarily agree with the \u201ctraditional\u201d expectations put on marriage. \u201cJada never believed in conventional marriage...Jada had family members that had an unconventional relationship,\u201d he told the publication. \u201cSo she grew up in a way that was very different than how I grew up. 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.\u201d
He also spoke about freedom in marriage. \u201cWe have given each other trust and freedom, with the belief that everybody has to find their own way. And marriage for us can\u2019t be a prison. And I don\u2019t suggest our road for anybody. I don\u2019t suggest this road for anybody. But the experiences that the freedoms that we\u2019ve given one another and the unconditional support, to me, is the highest definition of love.\u201d
November 2021: Will released his memoir, Will.
The tell-all revealed plenty of details about Smith\u2019s career and childhood, but the actor also wrote about his relationship with Pinkett Smith. \u201cMy divorce from Sheree wasn\u2019t yet final, so Jada and I decided it would be prudent if we kept our relationship under wraps. (We were both pretty famous, and we felt it just wouldn\u2019t have been a great look.),\u201d he writes in the book. \u201cThe blessed yet unintended consequence was that we spent every single moment together, just us. The first three or four months were as wild a romantic whirlwind as our bodies could have possibly handled.\u201d
He continues: \u201cWe fit together so naturally, and our energies combined exponentially in a way that felt like old friends more than new lovers. We had an unspoken language, and everything we focused on flourished.\u201d
After the memoir was released, Smith sat down with Oprah for an interview and shared some sentiments about his relationship. \u201cPeople are trying to put something on it: \u2018Will and Jada\u2014what they doing with other people?\u2019 Will and Jada ain\u2019t really doing too much of nothin\u2019. Will and Jada are on a spiritual journey to cleanse the poisonous, unloving parts of our hearts. And we\u2019re doing it together in this lifetime no matter what.\u201d
\u201cMe and Jada, to this day, if we start talking, it\u2019s four hours. It\u2019s four hours if we exchange a sentence. It\u2019s the center of why we\u2019ve been able to sustain [our relationship] and why we are still together, not choking the life out of each other\u2014the ability to work through issues. I\u2019ve never met another person that I connect with in conversation more blissfully and productively than Jada.\u201d
March 2022: At the Oscars, Smith had a confrontation with Chris Rock.
Otherwise known as the slap heard around the world, Smith approached the stage\u2014where Rock was hosting the Academy Awards\u2014and hit Rock in the face. Rock had just made an off-script comment about Pinkett Smith\u2019s appearance (she had previously revealed a journey with alopecia), and Smith, after slapping Rock, told him to keep his wife\u2019s name out of his mouth.
The shocking moment caused a huge stir. Smith had\u2014earlier that night\u2014won the Best Actor award for his performance in King Richard, and eventually released an apology statement. \u201cViolence in all of its forms is poisonous and destructive. My behavior at last night\u2019s Academy Awards was unacceptable and inexcusable,\u201d he wrote. \u201cJokes at my expense are a part of the job, but a joke about Jada\u2019s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally.\u201d
October 2023: Pinkett Smith revealed that she and Smith have been separated since 2016.
Ahead of the release of her upcoming memoir, Worthy, Pinkett Smith went on The Today Show to share that the pair are still separated and have been for years. They are still legally married\u2014on paper\u2014but that they are essentially divorced in practice. Pinkett Smith had not previously shared the news because they were not ready. They were \u201cstill trying to figure out between the two of [them] how to be in partnership,\u201d she explained in the interview. \u201cHow do we present that to people? We hadn\u2019t figured that out.\u201d
Cassie Hurwitz (she/her) is an associate editor at Oprah Daily, where she covers everything from culture to entertainment to lifestyle. She can typically be found in the middle of multiple books and TV shows all at once. Previously, Cassie worked at Parents, Rachael Ray In Season, and Reveal. Her love language is pizza (New York slices, Chicago deep dish, and otherwise).