Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith Separated in 2016

Jada Pinkett Smith said she and husband Will Smith have been separated since 2016.

In a clip from her forthcoming NBC News primetime special with Hoda Kotb, Pinkett Smith, 52, said she and actor Will Smith, 55, had been living "completely separate lives" since 2016, and that they had not gone public with the news sooner because they were not "ready yet."

They were "still trying to figure out between the two of us, how to be in partnership," she said. "How do we present that to people? We hadn't figured that out."

Pinkett Smith noted that she and Smith, who have been married since 1997, are not legally divorced. 

Their marriage has been under the spotlight over the years. 

In July 2020, singer August Alsina revealed that he was in a romantic relationship with Pinkett Smith, which she confirmed in an episode of "Red Table Talk" with her husband, according to CNN.

"I got into an entanglement with August," Pinkett Smith said at the time, adding that she and Smith were "going through a very difficult time" at then.

Smith stormed onto stage during the 2022 Academy Awards and hit presenter Chris Rock with an open hand after Rock joked about Pinkett Smith being bald. At the time he claims to have been unaware that she is battling alopecia, which causes hair loss. 

"I thought, 'This is a skit.'" Pinkett Smith later revealed in an interview with People. "I was like, 'There's no way that Will hit him.'" It wasn't until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realized it wasn't a skit."

After the incident, the first thing she said to Smith in private was, "Are you OK?"

Speaking with Kotb, Pinkett Smith said that there were "a lot of things" that caused their marriage to deteriorate. 

"I think by the time we got to 2016, we both just exhausted with trying," she said. "I think we were both kind of still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be."

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