Jada Pinkett reveals that she has been separated from Will Smith for 7 years

Jada Pinkett confessed that she has been separated from Will Smith for more than seven years. She explained that they have not formalized their divorce and said that they continued to appear together in public.

Pinkett's statements were part of an exclusive interview on Today with Hoda Kobt on NBC. The conversation took place to talk about her book Worthy, which will be published on October 17. In it, she gives more details about her relationship with the actor.

When asked by Kotb why the couple hadn't previously shared their split, Pinkett explained that she wasn't ready yet and was trying to figure out what her new relationship with Will Smith would be like.

The preview of the interview was posted by the program and only lasts a few seconds. “Why it fractured...that — that’s 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," Pinkett said.

During a Red Table Talk interview in 2020, Smith and Pinkett talked about their marital problems and confessed to episodes of infidelity. The couple said that they had been going through tough times but did not say that they had definitively separated.

At one point in the conversation, Will Smith said, "We decided that we were going to separate for a period of time and you figure out to make yourself happy and I'll figure out to make myself happy."

Jada Pinkett also talked about Will Smith's incident with Chris Rock, when Smith slapped Rock during the 94th Academy Awards. She said she thought it was a joke until she saw Smith return to where he was sitting.

"I thought, ‘This is 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 realized it wasn’t a skit" Pinkett said.