Pinkett Smith dropped the bömbshell about the longtime couple in a preview clip released on Wednesday morning, ahead of her sit-down interview with the “Today” show host Hoda Kotb.
“There are so many surprising things in the book, but the thing that surprised me the most, that I actually had to reread it, because I said, ‘Is this true?’ was that in 2016, you and Will decided that you were going to live completely separate lives,” Kotb tells the actor in the clip.
Pinkett Smith and Smith have been married since 1997 and share two children: a daughter, Willow Smith, and a son, Jaden Smith.
Their relationship has been subject to public scrutiny over the decades, particularly during Pinkett Smith’s “entanglement” with the singer August Alsina and when Smith disclosed to GQ they weren’t monogamous.
Pinkett Smith said it wasn’t technically a divorce on paper, but it was a split, and they’d been apart for the past seven years.
Pinkett Smith said she didn’t clarify the status of her and Smith’s relationship until now because she wasn’t “ready yet.”
“Still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in partnership, right, and in regards to how do we present that to people, you know? And we hadn’t figured that out,” she said.
When asked why the “relationship frâct¥red” Pinkett Smith said it could be attributed to “a lot of things.”
Elaborating, the star said: “I think by the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying. I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.”
Regardless of their challenges, Pinkett Smith said she refused to get divorced legally.
I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce,” she said. “We will work through whatever. And I just haven’t been able to break that promise.”
“We live separately,” Pinkett Smith added.
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