Jada Pinkett Smith Reveals She and Will Smith Have Been Separated Since 2016

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | October 11, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | October 11, 2023 |

On the Today show to promote her forthcoming memoir, Worthy, Jada Pinkett Smith revealed that she and Will Smith have been separated since 2016 and leading separate lives. She told Hoda Kotb that she and Smith were no longer romantically together, although they are not technically divorced.

Pinkett Smith further reveals that they hadn’t announced their split because they were not “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.” She adds that she promised not to get a divorce and that, “we will work through … whatever. I just haven’t been able to break that promise.”

Asked why they split, Pinkett Smith says that it “was a lot of things … 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.”

The 2016 break-up obviously precedes Pinkett Smith’s “entanglement” with August Alsina, the Red Table Talk conversion that Smith and Pinkett Smith had about the affair, and Will Smith’s slap of Chris Rock during the Oscars.

Kotb’s full interview with Pinkett Smith will ostensibly cover Pinkett Smith’s perspective on The Slap. Worthy will be released on October 17th.