Jada Pinkett Smith is getting candid about her marriage with husband Will Smith.
The “Girls Trip” actress, 52, revealed in a new interview with People that she and Smith, 55, are separated — and have been for years.
Pinkett Smith explained that she and Smith had been separated for six years prior to the 2022 Academy Awards — the night of the infamous Chris Rock slap.
“We’re still figuring it out,” she told the magazine of their marriage. “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.”
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith attend the “Emancipation” Los Angeles premiere at Regency Village Theatre on Nov. 30, 2022 in Los Angeles.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
People also shared an exclusive excerpt from her forthcoming book, “Worthy,” out Oct. 17, in which Pinkett Smith said she was at first “unclear” why Smith was “so upset” about comedian Rock’s joke at her expense at the 2022 Oscars.
“We had been living separate lives and were there as family, not as husband and wife,” she wrote. “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.”
Of the slap, which resulted in Smith — who won the award for best actor that night — resigning from the academy and receiving a 10-year ban from the Oscars, Pinkett Smith told People, “I thought, ‘This is a skit.'”
“I was like, ‘There’s no way that Will hit him,'” she recalled thinking. “It wasn’t until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realized it wasn’t a skit.”
Will Smith slaps Chris Rock onstage during the 94th Oscars at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California on March 27, 2022.
Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
Pinkett Smith said her first words to her husband after the show were, “Are you OK?” and she decided to she was “going to be by his side, but also allow him to have to figure this out for himself.”
The Hollywood couple were married on New Year’s Eve in 1997 and share three children: son Jaden, daughter Willow, and Smith’s son Trey — whom Pinkett Smith calls her “bonus son” — from his marriage to Sheree Zampino.
As she and Smith navigate their marriage, the “A Different World” alum said she is leaning on her children, saying, “They’ve taught me a deep sense of self-acceptance.”
“They love every part of me,” she added, praising the “level of love, unconditional love that they have for me and their dad.”
