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Partners
For nearly three decades, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith appeared to be the perfect couple.
When cracks in their seemingly idyllic relationship appeared - rumours of infidelity, open relationships and "entanglements" - they were brushed away and quickly shut down. However, when Will slapped Chris Rock at last year's Oscar ceremony, it was clear something was amiss.
Now, with Jada's revelation that she and Will have been separated for seven years, while still presenting the facade of a happy couple to the world, details of their disintegrating relationship have started to trickle out, mainly from Jada and her upcoming memoir, Worthy.
The Smiths are "exhausted with trying to work out their relationship", Jada told NBC News' Hoda Kotb in a teaser for an interview to promote Worthy.
“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,” Jada told People magazine.
We take a look at the ups and downs of their relationship over the years.
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1997
The couple, who met when Jada auditioned for a guest role on Will's hit sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, tied the knot in 1997 after dating for two years.
Along with a booming career as a rapper, Will found fame in six seasons of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which was followed by a string of hit movies, including Bad Boys, Independence Day and Men in Black, while Jada appeared in the massively successful Matrix movies.
His marriage to Jada was his second time down the aisle, after he divorced Sheree Zampino, with whom he has a son, Trey (30).
Jada and Will have two children, Jaden (25) and Willow (23).
2011
Rumours circulated that Jada had cheated on Will with singer Marc Anthony - who was married to Jennifer Lopez at the time - and the couple denied it.
Will and Jada released a statement saying, “Although we are reluctant to respond to these types of press reports, the rumours circulating about our relationship are completely false. We are still together and our marriage is intact.”
Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez divorced in 2014.
2013
When Jada said she'd always told Will he could do whatever he wanted, as long as he could look at himself in the mirror and be okay, there was immediate speculation that she was slyly admitting they had an open marriage.
“At the end of the day, Will is his own man. I’m here as his partner, but he is his own man. He has to decide who he wants to be and that’s not for me to do for him. Or vice versa.”
Jada subsequently clarified that the couple were not swingers.
"Will and I both can do whatever we want because we trust each other to do so. This does not mean we have an open relationship … this means we have a grown one.”
2015
A year before they were separated, Will denied rumours that their marriage was on the rocks and divorce was imminent.
“Under normal circumstances, I don’t usually respond to foolishness (Because it’s contagious). But, so many people have extended me their ‘deepest condolences’ that I figured – ‘What the hell… I can be foolish, too!’” he penned on social media. “So, in the interest of redundant, repetitious, over & over-again-ness… Jada and I are… NOT GETTING A DIVORCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
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2017
On What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Jada appeared uncomfortable when she was asked about "the craziest rumours" about her marriage, especially the one about their "open marriage".
"That’s the craziest one! It’s constant,” she told Andy.
“I’m like, yo, I wish!”
In retrospect, it's not surprising that she appeared awkward when Andy asked how the couple keep things romantic after 23 years together, as they'd already separated.
“I don’t know! I mean, I’m baffled, really. Will and I just have amazing chemistry on a lot of different levels. We love to laugh together, we love to learn together and we just love each other. We just have a good time together.
“Yeah, I guess that’s the secret. Yeah, we just really like each other!”
2018
The Smiths, said Will, no longer refer to themselves as “married," as they prefer the term, “life partners”.
“You get into that space where you realise you are literally with somebody for the rest of your life. There’s no deal breakers. There’s nothing she could do — ever. Nothing that would break our relationship. She has my support till death and it feels so good to get to that space.”
2020
Amid the chaos of the pandemic shutting down the world, the Smiths managed to make headlines with the "entanglement” allegations by Jaden's pal, singer August Alsina, who claimed he'd had an affair with Jada, with Will's blessing.
“I actually sat down with Will and had a conversation due to the transformation of their marriage to a life partnership that they’ve spoken about several times and it not involving romanticism,” August said in an interview.
"I totally gave myself to that relationship for years of my life and I truly and really, really deeply loved and have a ton of love for her.”
Hours later, Jada denied August's claims, but she subsequently admitted to the affair on her Facebook show Red Table Talk.
“I was in a lot of pain, and I was very broken. Now in the process of that relationship, I definitely realised that you can’t find happiness outside of yourself. I just wanted to feel good,” she said.
Later that year, Will and Jada spoke about their "unique union", with Jada saying she'd felt pressured by her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, to get married.
“I was under so much pressure, being a young actress and pregnant and I didn't know what to do."
READ MORE| Will Smith is seeking therapy after that infamous Oscar slap
2021
In his self-titled memoir, Will said he'd been jealous at Jada's close friendship with the late rapper Tupac Shakur, who was murdered in 1996.
"Though they were never intimate, their love for each other is legendary — they define ride or die. I hated that I wasn't what he was in the world and I suffered a raging jealousy: I wanted Jada to look at me like that."
2022
After two Oscar nominations for Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness, Will won the Best Actor Oscar for King Richard, but his accomplishment was overshadowed by "The Slap".
Chris Rock joked about Jada's baldness, prompting Will to walk onto the stage and slap the comic. He apologised to the Academy when he was awarded his Oscar later that evening and later to Chris.
He resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science and was banned from attending the awards and other events hosted by the Academy for 10 years.
"That was a horrific night, as you can imagine," Will told Trevor Noah in an interview later that year.
"There are many nuances and complexities to it. But, at the end of the day, I lost it and I guess what I would say, 'you just never know what somebody's going through', you know?
"I was going through something that night. Not that that justifies my behaviour at all. You're asking, what did I learn? It's that we've just gotta be nice to each other, man. It's hard. I guess the thing that was most painful for me is, I took my hard and made it hard for other people. I understood the idea of when they say hurt people hurt people."
2023
This month Jada publicly addressed the slap for the first time, telling People magazine she initially thought that Will slapping Chris was part of a skit.
“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 realised it wasn’t a skit.”
She hasn't spoken to Chris since that night at the Oscars, she said.
“[Do I have] any desire to talk to Chris? Here's my desire: I just hope that all the misunderstanding around this can be cleared up and that there can be peace," she told the magazine.
"I talk about this in the book [Worthy]. I think that there might be some misunderstanding between Chris and I as far as the Oscars. I think that he might've taken offence, which I meant no harm in offending. That wasn't my intention. But I do think that there's a big misunderstanding there."
Asked if she was offended by Chris' joke about her baldness, she said that she understood that being a celebrity meant that sometimes jokes at her expense "come with the territory".
She added that the comedian had once asked her out on a date, a few years ago, when rumours were doing the rounds that she and Will were getting divorced.
Chris was separated from his wife, Malaak Compton-Rock, in 2014, and their divorce was finalised in 2016.
"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 rumours’. He was appalled. And he profusely apologised and that was that.”
