It Saved Our Marriage- Jada Pinkett On Will Smith And Chris Rock’s Slapping Row
Jada Pinkett Smith has disclosed that the infamous slap Chris Rock received from her husband, Will Smith whom she was separated from at the time, bolstered their precarious relationship.
“That moment of the s— hitting the fan is when you see where you really are,” she told the Daily Mail’s You Magazine. “After all those years trying to figure out if I would leave Will’s side, it took that slap for me to see I will never leave him. Who knows where our relationship would be if that hadn’t happened?”
The actress further stated that she came close to not attending the 94th Academy Awards in 2022, but expressed her satisfaction in ultimately deciding to go.
“I call it the ‘holy slap’ now because so many positive things came after it,” she said.
Despite the potential positive impact on their marriage, the incident resulted in public scrutiny and forced Smith to issue multiple apologies. Furthermore, it led to his resignation from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a 10-year ban from attending the Oscars ceremony and other academy events.
During an interview with Hoda Kotb on “Today,” Pinkett Smith expressed her surprise at her husband’s choice of words on Oscars night when he instructed Chris Rock to refrain from mentioning her name disrespectfully.
“First of all, I’m really shocked … we haven’t called each other ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ in a long time. What is going on right now?” she said in the October interview.
Jada Pinkett Smith recently disclosed that she and her husband, Will Smith, have been living apart since 2016.
During an interview with NBC News, conducted by Sky’s US partner network, the 52-year-old actress expressed that they are currently in the process of navigating their marital situation. While they remain legally married, they have chosen to reside in separate residences.
“[We’re] still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in partnership, and how do we present that to people? We hadn’t figured that out.
“Why it fractured? That’s a lot of things. I think by the time we got to 2016, we were too exhausted with trying.
“I think we were both stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.”
She told NBC presenter Hoda Kotb that she considered getting a divorce but did not go through with it.
“I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce. We will work through whatever and I just haven’t been able to break that promise.”
