Both Will and Jada were pretty young when they got together, but Smith had a relationship history that extends back before he began the most high-profile and longest-running relationship of his life.
Before Smith started dating Pinkett, he was actually married to another woman. He tied the knot with Sheree Zampino in 1992. Shortly after they married, the two had a son, Willard "Trey" Smith III, in November of 1992. However, things ultimately went south for the couple.
Smith and Zampino eventually got divorced in 1995. While he would not marry Jada until a few years after the dissolution of his marriage, his growing closeness with Pinkett began to put a strain on his relationship that was too heavy for it to withstand.
Unlike her husband, Jada's love life wasn't too complicated when she first met Smith. She had dated other men before him, but she had no previous marriages under her belt. While there isn't a lot of information about Pinkett's early history, she did reveal that, before getting married, she once dated former NBA star Grant Hill while he was a student at Duke University.
Jada had one other famous "relationship" with a man before Smith, one that has been much-rumored but very mysterious, until Smith put the relationship into his own words...
He confessed in his 2021 memoir, Will, that although Jada was "never intimate" with the late Tupac Shakur, whom she met at the Baltimore School for the Arts in the '80s, his presence was still present in their relationship...but more on that later...
In the end, Jada herself admitted there was no romantic chemistry between herself and the late rapper. Will went on: "If she chose me over Tupac, there was no way I could be a coward. I have rarely felt more validated. I was in a room with Tupac on multiple occasions, but I never spoke to him. The way Jada loved 'Pac rendered me incapable of being friends with him. I was too immature."
Will Smith first met Jada Pinkett after she auditioned for a role on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. While she ultimately didn't get the part, she definitely caught Smith's eye. The two didn't officially start dating until a year later, but it was clear from the beginning that sparks were flying.
Their relationship wasn't made public until after Smith divorced Sheree Zampino in 1995, but that's not the whole story. Years later, Pinkett revealed that she and Smith had actually begun dating while he was still married—a fact she had some regrets about.
During a 2018 interview, which also featured Zampino herself, Pinkett said, "Because I did not understand marriage, I did not understand divorce...I probably should have fell back." In the same interview, Pinkett also spoke highly of Zampino, calling her "my entry point to motherhood."
The two had been dating publicly for almost two years when Smith finally asked Pinkett to marry him. Despite their high-profile status, the wedding was a secretive, low-profile affair. Despite the secrecy, it was still a major, lavish event.
The ceremony took place on December 31, 1997, and was hosted at The Cloisters, a large, historic home just outside of Baltimore, Maryland. And if you were lucky enough to get an invite, your lips needed to be tightly sealed!
The couple didn't send out traditional invitations, in order to maintain their privacy. Instead, the guests were instructed to arrive at a hotel in Baltimore, where they would be handed an envelope with directions. They weren't allowed to open them—instead, they were to hand them to a limo driver who would take them to the real destination of the wedding.
Pinkett didn't actually want a wedding, but she went through with it because she was already pregnant with their first child. She told USA Today, "I was so upset that I had to have a wedding. I was so [angry]. I went crying down the freakin' aisle getting married."
Smith also reflected on the early days of their marriage to GQ in 2022, saying, "Jada never believed in conventional marriage. Jada had family members that had an unconventional relationship. 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."
When Smith and Pinkett tied the knot, she was already three months pregnant with their son, Jaden. He was born about six months after the ceremony in July of 1998.
Jaden has definitely followed in his parents' footsteps and made a name for himself in Hollywood. He made his debut as an actor alongside his father in 2006's The Pursuit of Happyness and has appeared in several films since then. Additionally, he's also a musician and won a Grammy in 2021 for his work with Justin Bieber.
After the birth of their son in 1998, Smith and Pinkett welcomed their second child, Willow, in 2000. Like her parents and her brother, she has built a career for herself in Hollywood that involves both acting and music. She made her acting debut in 2006's I Am Legend and released her first single, "Whip My Hair" in 2010.
In the early 2000s, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett seemed like your average high-profile Hollywood couple. They were both succeeding in their careers (as were their children), and by all appearances, they seemed to be a happy family. However, in the early 2010s, rumors started swirling about the two.
There was talk that the two had an open relationship or were even swingers, but until 2013, nothing had been confirmed. At that point, Jada decided to address the gossip, but she just made things even murkier and more confusing for onlookers.
In a 2013 interview with HuffPost Live, Pinkett "addressed" the rumors with vague statements that seemed to all but confirm their open marriage. At the very least, she made it clear that the two share a very unusual and unique marriage.
In the interview, the actress had this to say when asked if she had an open relationship: "No, I think that people get that idea because Will and I are very relaxed with one another. But I've always told Will: You can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be okay."
While she did say no, everything that followed it pretty much contradicted that no! The two might not be comfortable calling their marriage "open", but Pinkett's response makes it sound like the two are comfortable with one another having other partners.
The salacious rumors about Smith and Pinkett's marriage continued to grow in the 2010s. And one of the biggest shocks came when rapper August Alsina claimed to have an affair with Pinkett—all with Will Smith's permission.
However, Pinkett denied that Alsina's description of the events was accurate. She called her relationship with the rapper an "entanglement." While that was shocking enough, she went on to drop an even bigger bomb after that.
Pinkett claimed that she did not have Smith's blessing when she began her relationship with Alsina. Instead, she says that it happened during a time when she and Smith were secretly separated.
Smith and Pinkett eventually reconciled and publicly discussed this period in their marriage on Pinkett's talk show, Red Table Talk. The conversation was raw and awkward, but listeners never really got confirmation on how her affair with Alsina actually panned out.
In 2018, the couple once again threw fuel on the fire with regard to their unconventional, open marriage. Smith revealed in an interview that they don't even refer to themselves as married anymore, despite the fact that they still are.
Smith elaborated on this pronouncement, saying, "[We] refer to ourselves as life partners, where you get into that space where you realize you are literally with somebody for the rest of your life. There’s no deal breakers. There’s nothing she could do — ever. Nothing that would break our relationship. She has my support till death and it feels so good to get to that space."
As if people hadn't already read and discussed their relationship enough, Will Smith goes into much deeper detail about their relationship in his 2021 memoir Will, which covered everything from their unusual beginnings to their troubles throughout the years.
One of the most unexpected reveals from the book was Will Smith's jealousy of Jada's friendship with the late Tupac. She had first met the rapper during their time at the Baltimore School for the Arts, and had a closeness with him that Smith was envious of.
In the book, Smith elaborated, saying, "Though they were never intimate, their love for each other is legendary — they define 'ride or die.' I hated that I wasn't what he was in the world, and I was suffering a raging jealousy: I wanted Jada to look at me like that."
Smith and Pinkett may not normally have a traditional marriage, but Smith made it clear at the 2022 Oscars that he was old-fashioned enough to defend his wife's honor. When host Chris Rock made a joke about Jada's appearance, Smith walked up on stage and slapped the comedian.
Bizarrely enough the show went on after this incident, and shortly after stepping on stage to slap the host, Smith stepped on stage to accept the Oscar for Best Actor. During his acceptance speech, Smith apologized (but not to Rock), saying “Love will make you do crazy things.”
A day after the incident, Smith finally apologized to Chris Rock via an Instagram post, which said, “My behavior at last night’s Academy Awards was unacceptable and inexcusable. Jokes at my expense are a part of the job, but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally.”
The moment has sparked lots of controversy online—some are fans of the way Smith chose to defend his wife, while others say violence is never the answer. But others have pointed out that his erratic behavior somewhat mirrors Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch back in the day. Which begs the question: Is there more going on behind the scenes of this tumultuous marriage? Could Will be losing his mind because he's getting entangled with Scientology? Only time will tell...
Will and Jada are back at it again, but the target is a little different. Someone named Brother Bilal recently made claims during an interview with Tasha K that he walked in on Will Smith and Duane Martin having an…entanglement, as Jada would say. Needless to say, Jada Pinkett Smith is unhappy with the statement made by Bilal.
She’s been quoted saying, “We’re gonna take legal action because it’s one thing to have your opinion about somebody, versus just making up salacious, malicious stories. So, that’s actionable. So we ‘gon roll with that.” Bilal recently worked with Smith on a book, and he feels as though he wasn’t properly paid for the book, so could this all be a rumor or is there something more?
