Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith Were Separated for Six Years Before 2022 Oscars Slap
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Jada Pinkett Smith revealed that she and husband Will Smith “had been living separate lives” for nearly six years and were attending the 2022 Oscars “as family, not as husband and wife,” when Will slapped Chris Rock over a joke he made about Jada.
In an excerpt from her upcoming memoir — and accompanying interview — in People, Pinkett Smith shared more details about one of the wildest pop culture moments in recent memory. Like many people in the room, or watching on TV, Pinkett Smith said she thought the slap was “a skit.”
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In the interview, she added: “I was like, ‘There’s no way that Will hit him.’ It wasn’t until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realized it wasn’t a skit.”
Pinkett Smith also appeared on Today, where she spoke about the decision to keep her separation — which she agreed effectively qualified as a divorce, even if they did not specifically seek a legal divorce — quiet for so many years: “I think, just not being ready yet. Still trying to figure out, between the two of us, how to be in partnership. And in regards to, how do we present that to people. And we hadn’t figured that out.”
Pinkett Smith also said there were “a lot of things” that led to the dissolution of the relationship, explaining that, by 2016, “we were just exhausted with trying. I think we were still both kind of stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.”
In a second interview with People, Pinkett Smith said she hadn’t spoken with Rock since the slap, though she did say he came to her right after and tried to apologize. “Chris came down to the end of the stage and tried to apologize to me,” she recalled. “He said, ‘I didn’t mean you any harm.’ I said, ‘I can’t talk about this now, Chris. This is some old shit.’”
Pinkett Smith speculated on a few things that might’ve been simmering underneath the slap, including a much more minor dust-up around the 2016 Oscars and the #OscarsSoWhite campaign. Rock hosted the show that year and made a handful of jokes about Pinkett Smith; Rock later claimed in a stand-up special that Pinkett Smith told him he should’ve backed out of the hosting gig in solidarity.
Pinkett Smith added cryptically that there was also “stuff” between Smith and Rock “before I even came into the picture in the late Eighties.” She continued: “I’ve got to leave that to Will and Chris to talk about, but they got their stuff for sure.”
On top of all that, Pinkett Smith revealed that, also in 2016, Rock asked her out on a date amidst rumors that she and Smith had divorced. “I think every summer all the reports would come out that me and Will were getting a divorce,” Pinkett Smith said. “And this particular summer, Chris, he thought that we were getting a divorce. So he called me and basically he was like, ‘I’d love to take you out.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ He was like, ‘Well, aren’t you and Will getting a divorce?’ I was like, ‘No. Chris, those are just rumors.’ He was appalled. And he profusely apologized and that was that.”
In the book excerpt, Pinkett Smith shared more memories about the slap, saying it wasn’t until Smith sat down and yelled at Rock, “Keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth” that she began to “perceive the gravity of the situation.” She wrote: “Even so, I am unclear on the reason why Will is so upset. We had been living separate lives and were there as family, not as husband and wife. But when I hear Will yell ‘wife’ in the chaos of the moment, an internal shift of Oh shit . . . I am his wife! happens instantly.”
Pinkett Smith also said she had a “premonition right before the incident,” because of Rock’s history of making jokes at her expense at the Oscars. While Pinkett Smith said she optimistically hoped Rock wouldn’t do it again, she also remembered thinking: “He’s not going to be able to help himself.”
Indeed, Rock couldn’t, and Pinkett Smith shared her feelings about the joke, which targeted her shaved head and alopecia. Pinkett Smith said the barb didn’t hurt her too much, and even acknowledged that it was “a very light joke,” but it made her worry about those “whose condition was far worse than mine.”
She continued: “I was frustrated that the majority of folks can’t seem to understand how devastating alopecia can be. My heart broke for the many who live in shame, the children who have committed suicide after being teased and taunted by their classmates. And now the Oscars, in all its political correctness, was telling the world it was okay to make jokes at the expense of a woman suffering from alopecia?”
This story was updated at 4:47 p.m. ET with more quotes from Pinkett Smith about the slap and the time Chris Rock asked her out on a date.
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