Jada Pinkett Smith, an American actress, has announced that she and her husband Will Smith have been separated since 2016.
She made the announcement in a preview of her upcoming primetime show with Hoda Kotb on NBC News.
She said that she and Will Smith didn’t make their divorce public because they weren’t “ready yet” at the time.
Jada Pinkett-Smith told Kotb that they kept the breakup a secret because they were still figuring out their relationship dynamics and how to move on with their partnership.
She stated:
“We were still trying to figure out between the two of us, how to be in partnership, How do we present that to people? We hadn’t figured that out.”
When asked why the marriage ended, she explained that they had become tired of trying to live up to their shared goal of who they felt they should be by 2016.
Pinkett-Smith stated that their upcoming divorce would be impossible to carry out due to a commitment they made to each other to never divorce.
“Why it fractured, that’s a lot of things,” the actress stated, “I think by the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying. I think we were both stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be. 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.”