Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed that the infamous incident where her husband Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on-stage live at the Oscars in 2022 saved their marriage.
The incident occurred after Rock made a joke about Pinkett Smith’s shaved head. Following the incident, Will apologised on numerous occasions and resigned from the Academy. He was later banned from all Academy events for 10 years.
Unbeknownst to the public at the time, the Smiths were separated and had been since 2016, which Pinkett-Smith only revealed in October while promoting her recent memoir Worthy.
Now, Pinkett-Smith has said that the incident made her realise that she should remain married to Smith, despite them contemplating divorcing.
“I nearly didn’t even attend the Oscars that year, but I’m glad I did,” she told the Daily Mail in a new interview. “I call it the “holy slap” now because so many positive things came after it.
“After all those years trying to figure out if I would leave Will’s side, it took that slap for me to see I will never leave him,” she continued. “Who knows where our relationship would be if that hadn’t happened?”
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Last month, Pinkett-Smith clarified that the couple are “staying together forever” despite being separated.
Meanwhile, Smith had said that Pinkett-Smith’s comments about their marriage in her memoir had “kind of woke him up”.
In a profile about Jada on The New York Times, Smith described her as being more “resilient, clever, and compassionate than I had understood”.
He added: “When you’ve been with someone for more than half of your life, a sort of emotional blindness sets in, and you can all too easily lose your sensitivity to their hidden nuances and subtle beauties.”
Jada has been married to Will since 1997. The couple share two children together, Jaden and Willow, while Will also has a son, Trey, from his previous marriage to Sheree Zampino.