Did Jada’s extramarital entanglement have Will’s
blessing or is this all Red Table rumors? Here’s the crazy timeline.
In the early 1990s, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith were both up-and-coming television actors.
While The Fresh Prince emerged from his successful music career with DJ Jazzy Jeff
onto the acting scene for his eponymously-named role of Will in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,
Jada similarly got her start on the sitcom A Different World.
Little did either of them know that their worlds would collide during an
audition for Will's classic '90s sitcom. Speaking to Vanity Fair,
Jada revealed that she auditioned for the role of Will's girlfriend in
the show when she was about 19, but claimed that she was deemed too short for the role.
However, as the actor claimed in an interview with Extra in 2017,
producers from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air soon invited her back after
her career started to rise. She said she turned them down, telling the publication:
"Once I got on my feet, and you know I was doing my thing... I had done a couple
of movies and I did 'Different World,' then 'Fresh Prince' wanna come back and be like,
'We need you on the show.' I was like, 'No, I'm a movie star, I don't have time.'"
"As you said, 'Let your heart speak and the truth shall be heard. Ha!'"
Will's girlfriend on the show was eventually played by actor Nia Long.
The star's unsuccessful audition left a lasting impact on her future husband, regardless.
After seeing her in A Different World, Will Smith wanted to get to know Jada Pinkett Smith
and enlisted the help of a mutual friend to formally introduce them. As he explained in
a 2018 episode of Red Table Talk, the friend had planned on setting the two up on the set of Jada's
sitcom but plans changed when Smith caught eyes for someone else. Smith said of the encounter:
"The dude that was going to introduce me to Jada
was with another girl and I was like 'Who is that?'"
The other woman was Sheree Zampino, whom Smith eventually married in 1992.
Smith and Zampino welcomed a son, Willard "Trey" Smith III in 1992. Throughout his first marriage,
he and Jada would frequently bump into each other and enjoy each other's company. It was during
these platonic incidents that Smith discovered that he had feelings for her. He recalled,
"I had a realization I wasn't with the person I was supposed to be with. I was
sitting in a [bathroom] stall and I was crying and laughing uncontrollably."
"And I knew that was the woman I was supposed to be with."
Will and Zampino divorced in 1995, and the actor wasted no time in connecting
with his new lover that same year. With a phone call and the smooth line, quote,
"You're seeing me now," the two started dating.
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith were inseparable during the early
stages of their relationship. In his 2019 memoir Will, Smith recalled,
"We drank every day, and had sex multiple times every day, for four straight months."
Although their passionate relationship was thriving,
Jada never had any intentions of getting hitched. But as the actor told People in 2019,
outside influences eventually changed her mind. She said,
"I never wanted to get married. But my mother was like, 'You have to get married' — she's so
old school — and Will wanted a family. So I said, 'All right, maybe it's something I should do.'"
By 1997, Jada was pregnant, and the pressure to get married only intensified.
The two married on December 31, that same year. At its core, Jada's attitude towards marriage
may not have changed much. However, it has far less to do with her husband and more to do with
what marriage represents to her. In a 2019 interview with The Guardian, she revealed,
"I knew that I was not built for conventional
marriage. [...] Even the word 'wife': it's a golden cage, swallow the key."
Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith's wedding wasn't particularly enjoyable for Pinkett
Smith for a notable reason. As she explained during an episode of Red Table Talk, she was
three months pregnant with their first child and experiencing sickness from her first trimester.
"We started dating, and then I got pregnant."
The two welcomed Jaden Smith to the world on July 10, 1998, and as his mom explained to
Fit Pregnancy two years later, she couldn't wait to meet him. She told the publication,
"With Jaden, the doctor said it'd take an hour-and-a-half to deliver him. And I said,
'Oh, it's not going to take that long. I'm too anxious to meet this baby.'
It took me 20 minutes to push him out."
The couple continued to grow their family, and on October 31, 2000,
their daughter, Willow Smith was born. Along with their two children, Jada has also helped
to co-parent Smith's son Trey Smith from his previous marriage to Sheree Zampino.
The alleged instability of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's
marriage has been a focal point of rumors about the couple for years.
In 2011, for instance, InTouch reported that the two were officially separating.
At the time, Jada was rumored to have had an affair with her Hawthorne co-star, Marc
Anthony, following a report from the outlet that Smith walked in on the two at his home.
As speculation about their alleged divorce broke,
the Smiths released a statement denying the gossip, which read,
"Although we are reluctant to respond to these types of press reports, the rumors circulating
about our relationship are completely false. We are still together, and our marriage is intact."
Speculation around the couple's relationship was further complicated
when Jada discussed their marriage in a 2013 interview with HuffPost Live.
Suggesting that her husband was freely given liberties in their marriage, she explained,
"At the end of the day, Will is his own man. I'm here as his partner, but he is his own man."
She later clarified on Facebook that she did not mean they were in an open marriage.
The breakup rumors resurfaced once again in 2015, and this time Will
took to Facebook to firmly insist that he and his wife were not divorcing, writing,
"If I ever decide to divorce my Queen — I SWEAR I'll tell you myself."
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett
Smith's world was seemingly dismantled when singer August Alsina alleged that
he was in a relationship with Pinkett Smith. Alsina addressed rumors and opened up about
their relationship in an interview with Angela Yee on June 30, 2020.
"I totally gave myself to that relationship for years of my life."
In the same interview, Alsina also claimed that Will gave
him his blessing to pursue a relationship with his wife.
That same day, representatives for Jada shared a statement with Page Six that
claimed Alsina's account of the relationship was false. However, by that time the world
had already swallowed the story. Just ten days after the singer's interview with Angela Yee,
Jada brought herself to the Red Table to clarify the details of their relationship.
On July 10, 2020, Jada Pinkett Smith personally addressed her relationship with Alsina on Red
Table Talk, and Will Smith joined her for the conversation. In the episode,
both she and her husband revealed that they had gone through a rough patch as a couple.
Sometime around 2016, the couple then decided to amicably separate. Meanwhile,
Jada formed a friendship with Alsina, and the two eventually developed a romantic relationship
which she famously referred to as an entanglement.
"A relationship."
"Yes! It was a relationship, absolutely."
Over time, Pinkett Smith realized that she needed to heal,
and that being away from her husband wasn't the solution. She said during the episode:
"I would definitely say that we tried everything we could
to get away from each other, only to realize that that wasn't possible."
In this realization, she and Alsina reportedly
stopped talking and had not talked since ending their relationship.
Pinkett Smith also claimed that Will didn't give his blessing for the relationship, saying,
"The only person who can give permission in that particular circumstance is myself."
Jada Pinkett Smith had an unconventional idea of marriage from the start. So it stands to reason
that her similarly unorthodox marriage to Will Smith would be redefined to better fit their needs
as a couple. Discussing their relationship in TIDAL's Rap Radar podcast in 2018, Will explained,
"We don't even say we're married anymore. We refer to ourselves as life partners, where you get into
that space where you realize you are literally with somebody for the rest of your life."
Though they have abandoned traditional terminology, the couple has maintained that
they will remain dedicated to their union as a couple for the rest of their lives.
In 2020, for instance, Jada suggested that experiencing quarantine with her husband
had also helped the two of them grow closer in a new way. On Red Table Talk, she said,
"The thing that Will and I are learning to do is be friends."
A year later, her husband opened up about their
modern relationship in an interview with GQ, saying,
"We have given each other trust and freedom,
with the belief that everybody has to find their own way. And marriage for us can't be a prison."
While Will Smith and Jada Pinkett
Smith have been through many difficult times and personal setbacks, arguably one of their
biggest happened at the 2022 Oscars ceremony. While presenting the award for Best Documentary
Feature, Chris Rock made a joke at the expense of Jada's shaved head, telling the audience,
"G.I. Jane Two, can't wait to see it."
Having openly shared her struggles with alopecia — an autoimmune disorder that
can cause hair loss — the star was shown immediately rolling her eyes at the gag.
"Well, I've been having issues with hair loss."
Shortly after, Smith walked up on stage, slapped Rock, returned to his seat, and yelled,
"Keep my wife's name out your f***in' mouth!"
The actor consequently resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences and was banned from attending the Oscars for 10 years.
Jada appeared to address the incident on Instagram with a cryptic post that stated,
"This is a season for healing and I'm here for it."