Will Smith has broken his silence after it was revealed that he and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith have been separated for several years.
The Oscar winner, who found himself in a position of extreme controversy after slapping Chris Rock during the Academy Awards ceremony in 2022 for comments made about his wife, shared a video of himself taking a trip on a boat, as well as enjoying a lovely nap.
“Notifications off,” the star wrote.
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This is probably a reference to the amount of stuff he’s had to deal with over the past few days since the revelations about his personal life emerged.
It all started with his wife’s memoir Worthy, for which Pinkett Smith is currently doing press.
In that book, Jada claimed that she’d actually been separated from Will since 2016, stating that their relationship had become ‘fractured’ by ‘a lot of things’.
"By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying," she told Today.
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"I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be."
Despite the pair having – for all intents and purposes – split up, Jada also said she hasn’t been able to go through with a divorce as she doesn’t want to break a promise she made.
She explained: "I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce.
“We will work through whatever,
“I just haven’t been able to break that promise."
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Elsewhere, Jada also revealed that the couple haven’t lived together for two years, and – amid previous rumours that they were going to split – claimed that Chris Rock had asked her out before the now-infamous Oscars slap.
She told People: “I think every summer all the reports would come out that me and Will were getting a divorce.
“And this particular summer, Chris, he thought that we were getting a divorce.
“So he called me and basically he was like, ‘I'd love to take you out.’
“And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’
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"He was like, ‘Well, aren't you and Will getting a divorce?’ I was like, ‘No. Chris, those are just rumours.’
“He was appalled. And he profusely apologized and that was that.”
Well, it was until that Oscars show, anyway.
On that front, Jada admitted that she was convinced it was a joke until seeing Will returning to his seat.
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"I thought, ‘This is a skit.' ... I was like, ‘There’s no way that Will hit him’," she said.
“It wasn’t until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realized it wasn’t a skit.
"We had been living separate lives and were there as family, not as husband and wife.
“But when I hear Will yell 'wife' in the chaos of the moment, an internal shift of 'Oh s***...I am his wife!' happens instantly."
Topics: US News, Celebrity, Will Smith, TV and Film
Tom Wood