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The scandal at the Oscar ceremony over Will Smith's blow to Chris Rock continues to leave sequels. Days after Smith's admission to a rehabilitation clinic became official, Jada Pinkett Smith made public her dissatisfaction with her husband's actions at the Hollywood Academy gala.
At first, the 50-year-old actress made a post on her Instagram that said: “This is a time of healing. And I'm here for that.” Will, for his part, made a public apology to Rock and the Academy. The couple who make up one of the most beloved marriages in cinema were harshly criticized for partying after the fact that it was seen by millions of people around the world. There are even videos of Jada smiling when her husband returns to his seat, after hitting Rock.
The problems between Jada and Will have come to light over the years. On the show “Red Table Talk”, the acting couple let fans know some of the darkest moments in their relationship. On one of the shows, Jada apologized to Will's first wife for having slept with the actor before they were divorced. But the most talked about episode was when they discussed face-to-face about the affair that the actress had with rapper August Alsina, 21 years old.
Will and Jada have become the most transparent and vulnerable couple in the show. Both acknowledged that they no longer have a monogamous bond and that they have had sex with other people. Together with her daughter Willow and her mother, Jada has managed to make “Red Table Talk”, which is broadcast on Facebook, the closest thing the digital age has to the role that Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Phil ever played on broadcast television: a place for difficult and complicated conversations about love, sex and drugs.
A past of addictions and violence
Jada Pinkett grew up in Baltimore under the care of her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, who was addicted to heroin for more than two decades. Adrienne became pregnant at the age of 17 with Robsol Pinkett Jr., who died of an overdose in 2010. On camera and in front of her daughter, she told that she was raped by Jada's father, who forced her to have sex without her consent.
“I don't think I found out that my mother was an addict until my teenage years,” the actress revealed some time ago. “I realized I was high when I couldn't get there in time to pick me up from school or fell asleep in the middle of something.” Adrienne has been sober since the 90s, but she has admitted that her bad decisions forever marked Jada's life. “The emotional and spiritual damage done to me and her was devastating.”
Jada also saw her mother suffer domestic abuse by her father during her childhood. “I knew that my mother and father had a very violent relationship from the beginning. She has a couple of scars on her body that, as a child, she was curious,” she said in her show “Red Table Talk”, which she leads with her daughter Willow Smith and her mother. The actress also recalled some of the most terrifying moments she experienced as a child trying to escape the violence of this man, who for decades disappeared from her life and decided to return when she was already a successful woman.
Mother and daughter have addressed the issue of addictions in one of the episodes of their show. In Jada's case, the actress confessed to being addicted to sex and alcohol. “My types of addictions jump from one side to the other. When I was younger, I thought I had some kind of sex addiction and that everything could be fixed with that,” he said. He also acknowledged that he drank excessively and used all kinds of drugs. “For me, drinking red wine was like drinking a glass of water. I drank a lot in high school, and then I went on to mix everything up: ecstasy, alcohol, marijuana... I was having a great time,” she recounted before the eyes of her mother and daughter, all three of them sitting around the red table that gives the show its name.
He consumed almost no alcohol during the week but spent his weekends at eternal parties. “From Thursday to Monday morning, it was a non-stop.” She was also addicted to pornography at a time in her life when she had decided to practice sexual abstinence. However, things got out of control and she was forced to stop consuming XXX movies: “I got hooked on hardcore porn videos that were very disturbing.”
A hard past weighing so much on her life since she was so young, Jada finally hit rock bottom when she thought of suicide when she was 20 years old. “I came to Los Angeles and I was successful and realized that was not the answer. It actually made things worse.” He initially handled the situation with Prozac. She didn't know it would kill her sex drive, which prompted her to quit the drug. Therapy didn't help either, forcing Pinkett Smith to forge her own path to mental health. “I had to let go and accept what life is.”
Although there was one episode that changed everything forever. It was in 1996 during the filming of “The Nutty Professor”, the remake of the Jerry Lewis film by Eddie Murphy. “I went to work drugged and had taken ecstasy in bad condition. I passed out on set and told everyone it must have been an expired medication. It was the last time.”
“If I look back, I am a walking miracle,” he reflects on that time.
Crying on the way to the altar and an affair with a friend of his son
In one episode of her show Red Table Talk, Jada admitted that she began her relationship with Will Smith while he was still married to his first wife. The actors met in 1994 when she unsuccessfully auditioned for a role in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”. They didn't give him the job, but he won Will's heart in real life. At that time he was married to Sheree Zampino, with whom he had their first child, Willard Smith III, better known as Trey. “Sheree asked me for a divorce on Valentine's Day. I remember that I signed the papers, got out of there and called Jada,” Will said.
In December 1997, Will married Jada. A year later Jaden, their first child, would arrive in the world, and in 2000 they became the parents of a girl they named Willow. Although her marriage has already exceeded two decades, the actress has confessed that at first she did not want to marry him. She was three months pregnant at the time and was pressured to say “I do”. “I was so angry because they forced me to get married, so angry, that I walked all the damn aisle to the altar crying,” she recalled about her wedding day.
It wouldn't be the last time she'd shed tears because of her husband. As the actor himself acknowledged on camera, Will joined Jada on “Red Table Talk” to talk about the biggest couple crisis they have had in almost 25 years of marriage. Some time ago he did something so bad that his wife spent more than a month crying. “He would wake up and start crying, he did it for 45 consecutive days. I know this because I wrote it down in a diary,” the actor confessed to his daughter, Willow. “It was the time I felt the worst in our marriage.”
Jada Pinkett and Will Smith have overcome major obstacles to stay together. Jada said that at the beginning of her marriage, she felt like she was living a life that was beautiful but wasn't authentic. Will admitted that his desire to shower her with beautiful things was more due to his own needs than to hers. “I realized I was building an image,” said the protagonist of “Men in Black”. “I grew up in a home where I was afraid and watched my father beat my mother, didn't I? So, I was going to build the opposite of that.”
Jada recalled feeling unhappy and yet confused at the same time, as her life abroad was perfect. “There were times when I felt ungrateful. I thought, 'Look at your life! How can you be so unhappy? ' I used to think I was crazy,” she said. Will and Jada broke up for a while but never divorced. They reconciled when she learned to be happy and he learned to keep his ego from getting in the way of their connection.
Will and Jada are the protagonists of a love story that has been questioned by the media since both agreed to mediate their relationship by doing couples therapy in public. “I've always told Will, 'You can do whatever you want as long as you can look in the mirror and be okay, '” Jada said in an interview. “I'm here as your partner. He has to decide who he wants to be and that's not up to me. And vice versa.” In dialogue with GQ magazine, Will shared: “Marriage for us cannot be a prison.”
“Jada never believed in conventional marriage,” the actor explained to the publication. “For much of our relationship, monogamy was what we chose, without thinking about monogamy as the only way to relate. We have given each other confidence and freedom, with the conviction that everyone has to find their own way.”
Far from making this revelation to show the fissures of his marriage, Will highlighted that his relationship with Jada is strong thanks to the work they have done building a bond with their own rules. They have broken down many taboos by recognizing, for example, that their marriage works because they allow themselves to talk about everything, even third parties. “I don't suggest our way to anyone. But the experiences of the freedoms we have given ourselves and the unconditional support, for me, is the highest definition of love.”
In 2018, the stars recognized that, after a tough couple crisis, they chose to reinvent their long-standing relationship. “Will and I have decided to discard the concept of 'marriage'. Because our thing is not that, it is a lifelong partnership, in the sense that we create a foundation together, which we know is forever,” explained Jada, when she turned 22 years old. Some time ago, the actress had already stated: “We can both do whatever we want, because we trust each other. That doesn't mean we're in an open relationship, that means we're in a mature relationship.”
In 2020, Jada revealed that she was romantically involved with singer August Alsina, 21 years her junior, during a crisis with the actor. Alsina claimed that Will had given him “permission” to have an affair with his wife. The actor acknowledged that he knew about the affair, but sharply denied that he had approved of the affair between his wife and his son's friend. “The only person who can give permission in that circumstance is me,” Jada insisted on August's claim that her husband agreed with the relationship.
Both Jada and Will assured that when the situation occurred their relationship was practically over. While they had already talked about some fights, they had never revealed how deep and painful that separation was. This romantic “entanglement” - as the actress called it - was positive for marriage as it brought them closer together. “One of the things that I am deeply grateful for in this whole process between you and me is that we have arrived at that new place of unconditional love,” Pinkett Smith shared on the show.
Will and Jada have stated that more than husband and wife they consider themselves “life partners” and that there is nothing or anyone who can separate them. They continue to look each other in the eye and emphasize that they have been together for more than 20 years and that they plan to stay together for much longer. They have made it clear that human relations are not easy, even when you have everything. For several days the actress has been making news because of her husband's actions on the night that should be the most important of her career. Smith's hit on Chris Rock at the Oscars after the comedian mocked his wife's baldness, who suffers from alopecia, and subsequent justification of violence as a demonstration of love, has left the popular American actor on hold in Hollywood. Personally, Will and his loyal partner must face a new and complicated chapter in their relationship that, they say, is stronger than ever.
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