Will Smith revealed to Wesley Lowery in the latest cover story for GQ that his wife Jada Pinkett Smith wasn’t “the only one engaging in other sexual relationships.”
Smith admits that while their arrangement isn’t for everyone, it allowed them to reach a place in their two-decade-plus marriage that the 53-year-old actor believes to be “the highest definition of love.”
“We have given each other trust and freedom, with the belief that everybody has to find their own way,” he explained. “And marriage for us can’t be a prison. And I don’t suggest our road for anybody. I don’t suggest this road for anybody. But the experiences that the freedoms that we’ve given one another and the unconditional support, to me, is the highest definition of love.”
This revelation comes ahead of his upcoming memoir, Will, which will be released on Nov. 9. Smith appears to suggest that Jada’s upbringing impacted how their own marriage would ultimately turn out in their pursuit of “relational perfection.”
“Jada never believed in conventional marriage.… Jada had family members that had an unconventional relationship,” he said. “So she grew up in a way that was very different than how I grew up. There were significant endless discussions about, what is relational perfection? What is the perfect way to interact as a couple? And for the large part of our relationship, monogamy was what we chose, not thinking of monogamy as the only relational perfection.”
Jada confronted rumors of an extramarital affair with singer August Alsina on her Facebook Watch series Red Table Talk in 2020 with Smith present. She explained that her and Will were “done” at the time of what she called an “entanglement,” to which Will responded, “We decided we were going to separate for a period of time and you go figure out how to make yourself happy and I’ll figure out how to make myself happy.”
It was then that people may have received confirmation that their marriage wasn’t quite conventional. Still, the main takeaways from their Red Table Talk discussion was this messy new term, “entanglement,” and the Sad Will Smith meme, which he claims had nothing to do with him being sad since they were discussing something that happened years ago, and everything to do with him being tired.
“It was midnight and we were going on vacation the next day,” Smith said. “It was like, no, no, no, guys, I’m not sad. I’m fucking exhausted.”
You can check out some reactions to Smith’s comments below and head over to GQ to read the profile in full.
