“Keep my wife’s name out your f— mouth,” were the iconic eight words shouted by Will Smith after slapping Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards.
That night, Jada Pinkett Smith had not anticipated hearing those words, particularly the term “wife.”
Recently, the actress from “Set It Off” mentioned to Hoda Kotb on the “Today” show how taken aback she was by last year’s incident involving Smith and Rock.
“First of all, I’m really shocked … we haven’t called each other ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ in a long time. What is going on right now?” Pinkett Smith told Kotb.
Earlier in the week, while discussing her forthcoming book “Worthy,” Pinkett Smith made it public that she and Smith had been leading separate lives since 2016. The duo, having completed their divorce, are parents to Jaden, 25, and Willow, 22.
During an NBC News special, set to broadcast Friday at 8 p.m. Pacific time, Pinkett Smith looked back at the notable Oscars event.
She mentioned that following the slap, Chris Rock, the Oscars host, expressed regret for his remark on her bald appearance. Pinkett Smith suffers from alopecia, leading to hair loss.
“I’m just out of it ‘cause I really worried about Will,” she expressed. “Will’s still talking … now he’s mad because Chris is talking to me. And I go, ‘Chris, this is about some old s—.’”
On the “Today” show, Kotb conveyed that Smith had his former spouse at the Oscars, thinking it’d be a defining moment for him.
Smith, being a top contender for the Best Actor award for “King Richard,” indeed received the accolade. However, the Academy later imposed a 10-year ban on him from its events.
Since their 2016 split, Pinkett Smith, now 52, and the “Bad Boys” star, 55, encountered challenges, like her close association with musician August Alsina, aged 31. They continued to make appearances together at events and award ceremonies.
The presenter of “Red Table Talk” indicated in another interview snippet that they hesitated to announce their separation, uncertain about public perception.
When questioned about the reasons behind their divorce, Pinkett Smith shared with Kotb that, after close to two decades together, “We were just exhausted with trying.
“I think we were both just kinda stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.”
