Jada Pinkett Smith reveals she is separated from Will Smith since 2016

Actress and talk show host Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed that she has been separated from her husband Will Smith since 2016- six years before the infamous Oscar slap took place where Will Smith had hit Chris Rock for poking fun at Jada.The actress made the revelation in an interview that aired Wednesday (Oct 11). The Hollywood power couple's marriage came under intense spotlight at last year's Academy Awards, when Smith struck comedian Chris Rock on stage for making a joke about his wife.

Jada revealed that the couple had already been living "totally separate lives" for years before the notorious incident.

"By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying," she said, in an advance clip from an interview to NBC News to promote her new memoir, Worthy.

Rumours of affairs and an open marriage were repeatedly denied by the couple for many years.

But in 2020, Pinkett Smith openly discussed an extramarital "entanglement" she had with singer August Alsina some years earlier, during a period of separation from her husband.

According to Wednesday's snippet, that separation has endured up until the present day, although the pair remain legally married.

Asked why the couple had chosen to conceal their separation, Pinkett Smith said they were "just not... ready yet" and "still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in partnership."

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"We just got deep love for each other and we are going to figure out what that looks like for us," Pinkett Smith told People magazine, in a separate interview.

'We are at Oscars as family not as husband and wife'

Pinkett Smith also discussed the Oscars ceremony of March 2022, in an excerpt from her memoir published Wednesday.Comedian Chris Rock was presenting on stage when he made a crack at Pinkett Smith's closely cropped head. She has alopecia.

In response, Will Smith mounted the stage and slapped the comedian hard across the face, before returning to his seat and yelling obscenities at the presenter.

In the excerpt, Pinkett Smith recalls that she initially thought the slap was a "skit," and once she realised it wasn't, she still remained "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," she writes.

Chris Rock had asked out Jada Pinkett Smith

Pinkett Smith told People that Rock had once asked her out when he thought she and Smith had separated. "I think every summer all the reports would come out that me and Will were getting a divorce, and this particular summer, Chris, he thought that we were getting a divorce," she told the magazine.

"So he called me and basically he was like, 'I’d love to take you out,'" she said, adding that she had to clearly state that there was no divorce in the offing.

"He was appalled. And he profusely apologised and that was that," she said.

Smith and Pinkett Smith first met on the set of his sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1994. Smith was married at the time to his first wife, whom he later divorced. The couple have two children together, Jaden and Willow.

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