WASHINGTON — Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith, Hollywood royalty since 1997, have been living separately for seven years and are essentially divorced, Pinkett Smith has revealed.
Pinkett Smith has been doing a run of media interviews as she promotes her upcoming memoir, "Worthy." In a teaser clip from an upcoming NBC News sit-down with Hoda Kotb, Pinkett Smith confirmed that she and her husband Will Smith have been separated and living "completely separate lives" since 2016.
In the clip, Pinkett Smith clarifies that the two aren't legally divorced, but in essence have been living as a divorced couple for the greater part of the decade.
"It was not a divorce on paper," Kotb asks her. "But it was a divorce."
"Right," Pinkett Smith responded, nodding along to the question. "Divorce."
In 2020, Pinkett Smith confirmed in an interview with her husband on his talk show, Red Table Talk, that she had been in a four-year affair with singer August Alsina while she and Smith were going through a rough patch in their relationship.
The "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" actor seemed visibly angry at the revelation, although the two appeared to reconcile publicly.
While the details about the affair's timeline were never publicly disclosed, a four-year fling ending in 2020 before being made public by Pinkett Smith and Alsina would line up with about the time when the Smiths separated.
"I was in a lot of pain, and I was very broken," Pinkett Smith said during the Red Table Talk interview.
Pinkett Smith confirmed to Kotb in the new NBC interview that her and Smith were no longer a romantic couple.
“By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying," she said. "I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be."
Despite the long separation, the couple hasn't sought a legal divorce.
“I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce. We will work through ... whatever,” Pinkett Smith said. “I just haven’t been able to break that promise."
The split also brings new details to the infamous Oscars slap. At the 2022 Academy Awards, Will Smith got on stage and slapped presenter Chris Rock for making a joke about Pinkett Smith's alopecia areata — an autoimmune disorder that causes sudden hair loss.
In a separate interview with PEOPLE magazine to promote her memoir, Pinkett Smith said she had the same reaction to the slap that millions of watchers did.
"I thought, ‘This is a skit.' I was like, ‘There’s no way that Will hit him.’” she told PEOPLE. “It wasn’t until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realized it wasn’t a skit.”
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith have two children together, Jaden, 25, and Willow, 22.
The NBC News interview with Hota Kotb is expected to air in its entirety on Oct. 13.
Pinkett Smith's memoir, "Worthy," is set to release on Oct. 17.