Jada Pinkett Smith bares all about marriage in interview, book: 'Hell of a rugged journey'
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Will and Jada Pinkett Smith's separation seven years ago isn't the full story – or in this case, memoir.
Although the couple had kept their 2016 split private – Smith kissed Pinkett Smith's face at movie premieres and appeared on her intimate Facebook Watch series "Red Table Talk," where they once vowed "bad marriage for life" – the actress writes openly of their estrangement in her memoir, "Worthy" (Dey Street Books, out Tuesday), and their decision not to divorce. The two are redefining marriage in a way reminiscent of when Gwyneth Paltrow thrust "conscious uncoupling" into the public consciousness.
The Smiths' union is a "life partnership," the "Girls Trip" star tells USA TODAY with a laugh, "and we're still trying to figure out what that means for us. These last two years have brought up a lot of stuff, and he and I've really just been focusing on healing together, and that's really been our priority.
"It's actually been really beautiful," says Pinkett Smith, 52. "Really intense circumstances can amplify love, or they can take you in the other direction and really deteriorate it. We've taken advantage of learning how to amplify it."
Pinkett Smith says becoming emotionally independent was a big lesson for her. "And now we're learning that emotional interdependence. It's a hell of a rugged journey, let me tell you. Learning how to love yourself and learning how to love somebody else when they're next to you, it's not for the faint at heart. It just is not. But it's been a beautiful journey. All of it."
Here's what we learned from a candid conversation with Pinkett Smith and her memoir.
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"Worthy" documents several key moments in Pinkett Smith's life, including the times she felt neglected by her parents, who suffered from addiction, her days of dealing drugs in Baltimore, the time her close friend Tupac Shakur wrote "I want to marry you" while incarcerated, her journey to reclaiming her identity, and her relationship with Smith, a "Fresh Prince" charming she thought would rescue her.
"Though I don't consider myself a romantic, I expected Will to save me and heal my past hurts," she writes, "as if the traumas, chaos, and depression experienced before we met would magically disappear within the ether of our ecstatic love." But by the end of 2016, after 19 years of marriage "flunked out of marriage therapy," Pinkett Smith writes, deciding to "separate in every way except legally" and "remain family-strong, not lose our friendship, and maintain our policy of complete transparency – i.e. no secrets about what we were doing and whom we were doing it with."
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Will and Jada Pinkett Smith were 'doing a lot of healing work' before the infamous Oscars
Pinkett Smith says any time she contemplated a divorce or separation, she felt a voice say, "Nah, you needed a little bit more work on yourself." Because the father of her two children would remain "a big part of my life," Pinkett Smith wanted to avoid "a nasty, drag-out fight and leaving blood all over the floor."
"So we really sat with it for a really long time," she says. "And it wasn't until 2022, after 'Emancipation,' Will had a really tough time and was going back into therapeutic spaces and asked me if I would join him. We were really doing a lot of healing work, and then the Oscars came. That's what brought us closer together."
Oscars slap helps bring Will Smith and wife Jada Pinkett Smith together
Pinkett Smith says Smith asked her to attend last year's Academy Awards after receiving a best actor nomination for "King Richard." "I know we're not together, but there's no one else I want by my side," she says Smith told her. Pinkett Smith says she accepted, not as his wife, but a "family member." She wound up being the butt of a joke by presenter Chris Rock, who described her hairstyle as a "G.I. Jane" haircut. (The actress has alopecia, a disease that causes hair loss.)
An enraged Smith approached Rock on stage and slapped him. Back at his seat, Smith twice yelled at Rock to keep his wife's name out of his mouth, using an expletive. Pinkett Smith initially thought that the interaction was a comic bit and that Smith didn't make contact.
"I was still really confused, because I didn't know what was going on," she says, "and we hadn't really called each other husband and wife since 2016. … So when we were sitting there, I was really not sure what had happened, what had come over Will. I was really just trying to get my bearings, but I knew that he needed me, and I was going to be by his side, no matter what."
Pinkett Smith says the pair have had "lots of conversations" about the ordeal, "unpacking that for sure." In "Worthy," she reveals the incident taught her "how to practice love unconditionally. All that thorny history of our complicated life together became a nonissue."
While she and Smith are in separate homes, she predicts "that time is going to be coming to an end soon. I think that we will be in a family home together once again."
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Does Jada Pinkett Smith forgive Chris Rock for his Oscars joke?
Pinkett Smith clarifies her frustration with the joke in "Worthy." It’s "a very light joke," she writes. "My heart broke for the many who live in shame, the children who have (died by) suicide after being teased and taunted by their classmates. And now the Oscars, in all its political correctness, was telling the world it was OK to make jokes at the expense of a woman suffering from alopecia?"
Pinkett Smith writes that Rock immediately apologized while the category clips played, saying. "Jada, I honestly meant no harm."
She says the two haven't spoken since the awards ceremony, but she writes in "Worthy" that "from spirit to spirit, he is my brother." Forgiveness, she says in the interview, is not hers to give.
"When we talk about forgiveness, this is really about Chris and his great supreme, his relationship with his higher power. I have understanding on what transpired, and it's a lot of misunderstanding, and I will always wish the best for Chris."
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Tupac's death: 'A million stabbings every second'
Pinkett Smith and Tupac Shakur met as students at Baltimore School for the Arts, where the actress noticed the teen's charisma and smile of "a million watts," she writes in "Worthy." The two "became inseparable" and continued to hang out in California, where aspiring entertainers chased stardom.
Though the relationship was not romantic, Pinkett Smith writes, Tupac proposed to her in a letter sent from Rikers Island in 1995, where he awaited sentencing for a sexual assault charge.
"After deep reflection and spiritual awakening I have come to realize the friend, lover and soulmate was there all the time," Tupac wrote her, adding, "I want to marry you." Jada suspected her friend "wanted me as a wife to get him through his jail sentence, but not for a lifetime," she writes, and says she declined his proposal.
Once Tupac was released from prison, the two met at a Los Angeles restaurant, where they had a major blowup. She says she no longer recognized her friend after he started hanging out with Death Row Records co-founder Suge Knight. Tupac accused her of going "all Hollywood."
After the heated exchange, Pinkett Smith writes that the two didn't say goodbye. About a year later, in September 1996, Tupac was murdered in Las Vegas. Pinkett Smith was crushed by the news, she writes. "My heart felt ravaged, like a million stabbings every second."
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Pinkett Smith makes a heartbreaking confession in "Worthy," sharing that she had "begun to think about how to have a fatal accident that wouldn’t look intentional ? for the sake of my kids."
But thoughts of ending her life came to an end after a four-night Ayahuasca journey in 2012 with a Medicine Woman in Ojai, California. "Suddenly, it hits me ? my whole ordeal has been one of my own making," she writes. "I've been taunting myself with false beliefs about my life and who I am."
"At that particular point in my life, I was at a rock bottom," she says. "The medicine just helped me heal that messaging and replace it with messaging that was actually more true, which is, 'No, no, no. You are a child of light. You are made of light, and you are loved. And you are lovable.' It really helped me see and dispel those shadows that I was walking with."
If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline that provides confidential 24/7 support by dialing 988, or visit 988lifeline.org.
Crisis Text Line also provides free, 24/7, confidential support via text message to people in crisis when they dial 741741.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jada Pinkett Smith on Will Smith marriage: 'Hell of a rugged journey'
