JADA Pinkett-Smith has revealed that she and Will Smith have been separated for years.
The actress sat down with Today for an interview about her memoir, Worthy.
Hoda Kotb led the interview and said that the aspect of the book that shocked her the most, and one that she had to re-read, was that Jada and Will, 55, decided to "live completely separate lives" in 2016.
"It was not a divorce on paper, but it was a divorce," she said.
Jada nodded her head and confirmed that it was true.
"So since 2016, which is seven years now, y'all have been apart?" Hoda, 59, asked.
"Yeah," Jada, 52, nodded her head.
Will and Jada married in Baltimore, Maryland, on New Years Eve 1997 and share two kids together, Willow, 22, and Jaden, 25.
He has a son named Trey, 30, with his ex-wife, Sheree Zampino.
Jada shared that they weren't ready to share the news publicly and were figuring out "how to be in a partnership" and that's why she kept it private all these years.
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"In regards to, how do we present that to people? We hadn't figured that out," the mother-of-two shared.
As for the reason, she said it was "a lot of things" and they were "stuck inside a fantasy" of what they thought the other person should be.
"By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted of trying," Jada shared.
The estranged couple has been keeping up public appearances since then as though they were still together, including the famous Oscars slap of 2022.
The split confession comes after Will and Jada admitted in 2020 that she had a romance with musician August Alsina, who was 25 at the time at the time of the romance.
This happened when she and Will secretly separated in 2016.
NOT ON PAPER
Although the actors are split physically, they are not legally divorced.
Jada considered a legal divorce, but never went through with it.
"I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce," she told Hoda.
"We will work through whatever."
Jada went on: "We just haven't been able to break that promise."
However, Hoda asked the Red Table Talk host if they still live together, and Jada said they "live separately."
Hoda revealed to her Today co-hosts that they have not called each other "husband and wife" in years.
"Except in every public appearance," Savannah Guthrie said.
'STILL FIGURING IT OUT'
In an interview with People about the state of their marriage, Jada said: “We’re still figuring it out. 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.”
How her children have been during the split, Jada shared with People: "My children, they’re little gurus. They’ve taught me a deep sense of self-acceptance.”
"They love every part of me."
She ended: "The level of love, unconditional love that they have for me and their dad. And it's one thing to want to be the person that gives that unconditional love. And then there's, to be the recipient of that.”
HER STORY
The full interview with Hoda and Jada will air on Friday, October 13, at 8/7c on NBC.
The one-hour special takes place in Jada's hometown of Baltimore, Maryland.
Worthy will be available in hardcover on October 17.
Hoda said that the actress really opened up about a lot of topics and her and Will's separation was only one of them.
Per publisher Dey Sreet Books, Worthy chronicles the “rollercoaster ride from the depths of suicidal depression to the heights of personal rediscovery and the celebration of authentic feminine power."
The book also touches on Jada's relationship with the late rapper Tupac Shakur, whom she met in high school.
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Will and Jada met on the set of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1994.
Jada was three-months pregnant with Jaden during their 1997 wedding.
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