Will Smith can’t seem to keep his wife’s name out of his own mouth. In an emotional speech at an event held to promote Jada Pinkett Smith’s new memoir, Worthy, Smith described their “tumultuous” relationship with the portmanteau “‘brutiful’…brutal and beautiful at the same time.” He also called their marriage “a sloppy public experiment in unconditional love.”
The Worthy promotional event was held in Pinkett Smith’s native Baltimore at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Both Smiths were in attendance, despite Pinkett Smith’s headline-grabbing revelation earlier this month that the pair had been formally separated since 2016, though they still have no plans for divorce. Per the Baltimore Sun, the Oscar winner told the crowd that he attended Pinkett Smith’s book event because he “just really wanted to come out and just be here and hold it down for you the way you have held it down for me.”
“We have had a very, very long and tumultuous [relationship],” he continued. “We call it ‘brutiful.’”
On Monday evening during an event at New York City’s Perelman Arts Center, Pinkett Smith said that the infamous 2022 Oscar slap helped bring the pair, who were separated at the time, closer together. “As soon as I was like, Oh snap, you hit Chris [Rock], I was like, I’m riding with you,” she said in an interview with Arianna Huffington. “I didn’t come into this place as your wife, but I’m leaving here as your wife, because we got a storm we’re going to have to deal with together.” Earlier this week, Smith wrote in an email to The New York Times that reading Pinkett Smith’s memoir “woke him up” from “a sort of emotional blindness” that sets in after being “with someone for more than half of your life.” He also posted an Instagram giving an “official statement” that turned out to be a joke.
Despite all the drama that has surrounded the A-list couple the past few weeks, Smith claimed Wednesday to be as happy as he’s ever been. “As I stand here before you today, I am happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life,” he said. “I have achieved every single thing I have ever wanted in my entire life.”