Try as she may, Jada Pinkett Smith can't seem to set the record straight
Much as Jada Pinkett Smith has tried to explain her marriage to Will Smith, the public continues to misinterpret her words
Will and Jada Pinkett Smith already had a tendency to overshare before each of them released a memoir where they shared even more. The duo has opened up to the public so much that it’s become a meme. (“Jada Pinkett Smith reveals that…” one viral tweet reads, ending with Meryl Streep’s feral scream from Big Little Lies.) Every word they say about each other is made into its own headline, pulled apart and dissected until it becomes incomprehensible, like staring at a painting too long until it becomes a blur of colors instead of a picture.
It’s ironic, because it seems Jada’s intention with her book Worthy is to be better understood. She’s extremely aware of the “narrative” created around her as Will Smith’s Wife, even when she was (unbeknownst to the public) not technically his wife. The infamous Oscar’s Slap was apparently about Will, his issues with Chris Rock, and his fragile mental state after filming Emancipation, according to a New York Times report, but Jada knew it would become about her reaction to Rock’s jabs. “I had to think about the narrative out there of me as the adulterous wife, who had now driven her husband to madness with the command of one look. I had to take responsibility for my part in aiding that false narrative’s existence,” she told the NYT. “I also had to chuckle at the idea that the world would think I wielded that amount of control over Will Smith. If I had that amount of control over Will, chile, my life would have been entirely different these damn near three decades. Real talk!”
The biggest buzz out of the memoir press tour is that the couple “hadn’t been calling each other husband and wife in a long time” at the time of the Oscars, though her sense of loyalty and their mutual commitment to their family compelled her to stand by him in the Slap aftermath and, well, all the rest of that time where we all thought they were still married. In fact, despite the fact that she described herself to the NYT as an “urban nun” abstaining from sex (among other things), the pair is still committed to working on their marriage.
After dropping the bombshell that she and Will had been separated for years in an interview with Hoda Kotb, Jada came to Today on Monday morning to clarify to Kotb where things stand. The couple are in a “deep, healing space” and are “working hard” on the marriage, which was “totally missed” in their initial interview. “We are working very hard at bringing our relationship together. Back to a life partnership,” she told Kotb. “The beautiful about it is like, this whole journey, as difficult as it’s been, just brought Will and I closer in such an authentic way. Instead of trying to be a thing, it’s like just tearing all that down and finding what’s true between us. It’s been difficult, but beautiful.”