Will Smith Breaks Silence on Jada Pinkett Smith’s Memoir

Claire Franken
·2 min read
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Turns out the details Jada Pinkett Smith disclosed about her personal life in her upcoming memoir Worthy, including her quiet seven-year separation from husband Will Smith, surprised even Smith himself.

The New York Times published an interview with Pinkett Smith on Saturday that included an emailed statement from Smith, in which he shared that Worthy “kind of woke him up.” The book made him realize that “she had lived a life more on the edge” than he thought and that “she is more resilient, clever and compassionate than he’d understood,” the Times paraphrased.

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“When you’ve been with someone for more than half of your life,” Smith wrote, “a sort of emotional blindness sets in, and you can all too easily lose your sensitivity to their hidden nuances and subtle beauties.”

The actor’s comments come just days after Pinkett Smith sat down with Hoda Kotb in an NBC primetime special and disclosed that she and Smith have lived “completely separate lives” since 2016, which includes the time that Will infamously slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony.

Pinkett Smith said their separation began after growing “exhausted with trying.” When asked why they opted for a separation as opposed to a divorce, she said the couple just wasn’t ready to formally end the marriage.

“I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce. We will work through whatever. And I just haven’t been able to break that promise,” she said.

Also in Worthy, which goes on sale Tuesday, Pinkett Smith devotes an entire chapter to the slap heard ’round the world. Per People, Pinkett Smith — like the millions of people watching — thought it was a joke. “When Chris was still standing afterward,” she writes, “I believed my observation to be true: ‘Aha — this IS a skit.’”

The now-infamous slap occurred more than two hours into the March 27, 2022 Oscars broadcast, after Rock made a GI Jane joke aimed at Jada Pinkett Smith, who is bald and has previously spoken publicly about her hair loss condition, alopecia. Not long after the incident, Smith won the Best Actor award for his work in King Richard and delivered an emotional acceptance speech where he apologized to the Academy and his fellow nominees.

The following day, Smith also extended a public apology to Rock, calling his own behavior “unacceptable and inexcusable.”

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