- Jada Pinkett Smith spoke about how the 2022 Oscars slap affected her relationship with Will Smith.
- She and Smith, who were secretly separated at the time, "did some really deep work together" afterward.
Jada Pinkett Smith said that the infamous Oscars slap involving host Chris Rock was a turning point in her relationship with Will Smith, and made her want to recommit to their marriage.
"After the Oscars, that's when we did some really deep work together," Pinkett Smith said at the first stop of her "Worthy" book tour on Monday night at New York City's Perelman Performing Arts Center, presented in partnership with CAA and Vanity Fair.
"When I was sitting at the Oscars, it clicked in, I was like, 'Oh snap, you hit Chris?'" Pinkett Smith recalled during her conversation with Arianna Huffington. "I was like, 'I'm riding with you. I didn't come into this place as your wife, but I'm leaving here as your wife because we got a storm we're gonna have to deal with together. I am NOT going to leave your side.'"
At the 2022 Oscars, Rock made a distasteful joke about Pinkett Smith's bald head that prompted Smith to get up from his seat in the audience and slap the comedian in the face. In the moment, Rock played off the attack, telling the crowd, "Oh, wow! Wow. Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me."
Smith, who's been married to Pinkett Smith since 1997, didn't find the situation humorous and warned Rock, "Keep my wife's name out of your fucking mouth!"
In her memoir, "Worthy," Pinkett Smith explained that she was surprised at Smith referring to her as his "wife" because, unbeknownst to the public, the couple quietly separated in 2016. In the years that followed, they had been privately living separate lives and hadn't referred to each other as "husband" and "wife."
While speaking with Huffington, Pinkett Smith said that the incident pushed her closer to Smith so she could support him in the aftermath.
"I said, 'I'm not gonna be able to get away from this dude. I really love him,'" Pinkett Smith said. "And that was the moment. It was like an emotional crisis. It took an emotional crisis for me to really see like, 'Yo, we in this for this lifetime.' So that's where we are."
In the days leading up to the release of her memoir, Pinkett Smith revealed via a prime-time interview with "Today" show cohost Hoda Kotb that she and Smith separated seven years ago. She wrote about their decision to split in her book as well.
Pinkett Smith shared an update on their relationship during a follow-up appearance on the "Today" show on Monday, telling Kotb that she and Smith are "working hard at bringing our relationship together."
Speaking to Huffington, Pinkett Smith said that their dynamic is "actually not complicated, but I can see how it would be complicated for others."
"Will and I have gone through such an intense journey together to really learn what love is about, she said. "And that's what being in relationships is about, learning how to love. We come into relationships thinking we know how to love."
Pinkett Smith said that going into her relationship with the "King Richard" star, she "had this false idea that Will was supposed to make me happy. And I lived with that for a long time and I would get so disappointed when he didn't."
"So in 2016, we both were exhausted, pulling at each other, power struggles," Pinkett Smith said. "And I had to go and really learn how to love myself before I could even identify what love looked like coming from somebody else."
Pinkett Smith said that she and Smith have both done work separately and "now we're in this beautiful place."
"We've been willing to do work together," she said.