Smith Family Friend Spills The Beans On The True Nature Of Will And Jada's Marriage

By now, Will and Jada should be used to their relationship causing a stir. Especially since they’ve both dropped enough hints that there’s certainly something atypical about the whole thing. In July 2018, for instance, Will gave some insight into his marriage during an appearance on a Tidal podcast called Rap Radar. For starters, he and Jada don’t use the term “married” anymore. He said, “We refer to ourselves as life partners, where you get into that space where you realize you are literally with someone for the rest of your life.”

But Will was also quick to confirm their commitment to each other. “There’s no deal breakers,” he stated. “There’s nothing she could do – ever. Nothing would break our relationship. She has my support till death, and it feels so good to get to that space.” No matter what you may think of their approach, it’s certainly unconventional for a celebrity to be so candid about their relationship.

Though, as a Hollywood couple, perhaps Will and Jada have decided that if stories are going to be out there anyway, they may as well be true. Whatever the case, something must be working, because the stars have been married for 23 years and have two children together: 22-year-old Jaden and 19-year-old Willow. Since each and every member of the family is famous in their own right, the name Smith is often in the headlines. It seems they weren’t expecting the recent revelations, though.

Obviously, Will is a Hollywood leading man. And, professionally at least, he’s had a pretty good year, as his latest blockbuster, Bad Boys For Life, is the number one movie at the U.S. box office in 2020 thus far. And Jada is also a successful actor, with recent credits including 2019 action thriller Angel Has Fallen and the upcoming fourth entry in The Matrix franchise. Their kids have made it big in the biz, too: Jaden is an actor and musician, whose latest movie, Life In A Year, is currently in post-production. He also released albums in 2017 and 2019, as did his sister Willow.

While Will and Jada have experienced huge success in their respective careers, their personal life has been no stranger to turmoil. They’ve been upfront on Jada’s Facebook Watch talk show Red Table Talk about how maintaining their marriage – and keeping their family unit happy – has required a lot of work. In fact, the Bad Boys star revealed his failings on an October 2018 edition of the show.

In a moving segment, Will admitted to not seeing how unhappy his loved ones had been at a certain point in time. And he only truly grasped how bad the situation was when Willow shaved off her hair. It seems that the troubled youngster did this in a form of protest against recording any more music after her single “Whip My Hair” made her a star at the tender age of nine.

Speaking on the show, Will said, “I saw for the first time what Jada had been saying the whole time about hiding behind my ego, my dreams and my desires and pretending like it’s love. And I realized [Jada] wanted none of the stuff I had built. The house was too big, there was always too many people here, she didn’t want to travel the way we traveled.”

Once he was past this, Will was then able to see how Jada “didn’t want all of her kids to be getting trolled on Twitter. She didn’t want any of that.” He realized that, in order for them all to move on, he had to discard what their family life had become. He admitted, “To have to let go of the picture, to have to let go of the dream was devastating.”

On top of this change in how the family lived, Will said he and Jada’s marriage had to transform as well. “We essentially had to destroy our marriage,” he revealed. “We broke up within our marriage and got back together again. We had to rebuild with new rules and something way, completely different.” But this wasn’t the first time that the Fresh Prince star had to break a relationship.

Prior to being with Jada, Will was married to Sheree Zampino, with whom he had a son named Trey. But the couple broke up in 1995 when Trey was a toddler. Recently, the actor addressed the divorce on a Father’s Day episode of Red Table Talk when he admitted, “Divorce was the worst thing in my adult life. Divorce was the ultimate failure for me.”

“I’ve been hurt a lot in my adult life,” Will continued. “But I don’t think anything touches the failure of getting divorced from my two-year-old son’s mother.” The divorce was instigated when he met Jada, who auditioned to play his girlfriend on the sitcom The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. In fact, Will could pinpoint the exact moment he knew Zampino wasn’t who he wanted to be with.

“[Jada and I] sat down... and talked,” Will revealed on Red Table Talk. “There was a really unique, beautiful power. We had that moment and we connected, but I was married. The next night, me and Sheree went to dinner and I sat down with Sheree, and it was one of the most bizarre emotions I ever had.”

Will went on to reveal that he actually had an emotional breakdown right there in the restaurant. “We were at The Palm and I remember I had to get up from dinner when I had a realization that I wasn’t with the person I was supposed to be with,” he admitted. “I went into the bathroom in The Palm, and I broke down in tears.” But it wasn’t until Zampino ended the relationship a few months later that Will made his feelings for Jada known.

Despite the Smiths’ statements of devotion to each other over the years, however, rumors of them enjoying an open marriage began in earnest. In 2005 Will told the Daily Mail, “Our perspective is, you don’t avoid what’s natural. You’re going to be attracted to people. In our marriage vows, we didn’t say ‘forsaking all others.’ The vow that we made was that you will never hear that I did something after the fact.”

Will then made his meaning even more explicit. He said, “If it came down to it, then one can say to the other, ‘Look, I need to have sex with somebody. I’m not going to if you don’t approve of it – but please approve of it.’” With astonishing candor, Will said he realized he was having sexual feelings for other women when he co-starred with Eva Mendes in Hitch. He also went on to call Mendes “freaking gorgeous.” No words on what Jada thought of that admission, but she probably wasn’t over the moon about it. Maybe that’s why she eventually spoke out herself. And when Jada opened up about her relationship, that, too, sent the gossip into overdrive.

Eight years later, during an interview Jada conducted with HuffPost Live, the open marriage rumor reared its head again. She said, “I’ve always told Will, ‘You can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be okay.’ Because at the end of the day, Will is his own man.”

Jada then elaborated, “I’m here as his partner, but he is his own man. He has to decide who he wants to be and that’s not for me to do for him. Or vice versa.” But while these comments certainly seemed to lend credence to the open marriage rumor, the Gotham star later backtracked on them in a Facebook post.

“Here is how I will change my statement,” Jada wrote. “Will and I both can do whatever we want, because we trust each other to do so. This does not mean we have an open relationship. This means we have a grown one.” Jada’s denial of an open marriage was one thing, but the couple have also vehemently denied affairs with other celebrities. In more recent years, though, hip hop artist August Alsina added further fuel to the fire with his own claims.

In 2011, for instance, magazine In Touch Weekly published a story about Will finding Jada in bed with Marc Anthony, her co-star in TV drama Hawthorne. By this point, Anthony had been separated from spouse Jennifer Lopez for a month or so. Both Will and Jada’s representatives published statements denying the story and any supposed affair, saying their marriage was still going strong. But the rumor mill kept on turning.

Then, in 2013, stories circulated of Will getting close with Margot Robbie, his co-star in Focus. But Robbie flat-out rubbished the rumors. Fast forward six years, and during a Red Table Talk episode, Jada addressed the cheating allegations again. Although she completely denied any infidelity in her marriage, she did hint at other, more mysterious betrayals.

Jada said, “I’m asked a lot about, ‘Is there infidelity in your relationship with Will?’ And it’s like, ‘No, but there have been other betrayals of the heart that have been far bigger than I could even think in regards to any infidelity situation.’ When you talk about contempt, resentment, neglect, it can just tear your world apart.” The plot thickens.

And potential infidelity in the Smith marriage again made headlines in late June 2020. But this time, there was a difference. You see, it wasn’t the press or a supposed source that set tongues wagging. No, it was a participant in a supposed extra-marital affair who made the accusations. August Alsina had attended the 2017 BET awards with Jada – and alleged he had been a part of a multi-year affair with her.

In fact, rumors had begun circulating in 2019 when Alsina included a thinly veiled reference to Jada in the music video for his song “Nunya.” Then, this year, the hip hop star was interviewed by The Breakfast Club radio host Angela Yee about his latest record and the YouTube documentary StateofEMERGEncy: The Rise Of August Alsina. During the chat, talk turned to his love life and also his friendship with the Smith clan. Specifically, Yee asked about the nature of his relationship with Jada.

Alsina, it seems, wanted to lay his cards on the table, so he responded by clarifying his stance on the rumors that cast him as a home-wrecker. “People can have whatever ideas that they like,” he said. “But what I’m not okay with is having my character in question, when certain things are questionable that I know that’s not me. Contrary to what people may believe, I am not a troublemaker. I don’t like drama. Drama actually makes me nauseous.”

Privacy is obviously important to Alsina, who questioned whether the public should even know anything about his love life. “And I also don’t think that it is ever important for people to know what I do, who I sleep with, who I date,” the singer continued. “But in this instance, it is very different because as I said, there are so many people that are side-eyeing me, looking at me questionable about it.”

Alsina then revealed that the rumors have not only cost him personally, but financially as well. He said, “I have lost money, friendships, relationships behind it and I think it is because people don’t necessarily know the truth. But I have never done anything wrong.” He then used the interview as an opportunity to set the record straight by dropping a bombshell.

According to Alsina himself, Will was fully aware of the young singer’s desire to pursue a relationship with his wife. In fact, the hip hop star says that Smith gave the go-ahead personally. “I actually sat down with Will and had a conversation,” claimed Alsina. “Due to the transformation from their marriage to their life partnership that they have spoken on several times, and not involving romanticism, he gave me his blessing.”

Following this shocking claim, Alsina detailed his love for Jada. “I totally gave myself to that relationship for years of my life,” he alleged. “I truly and really, really deeply loved, and have a ton of love for her. I devoted myself to it, I gave my full self to it.”

All in all, Alsina felt he had to finally tell the real story because his professional life was being affected by the rumors. He could stay silent no longer. As he put it, “I know that I am completely blessed and this conversation is difficult because it is so much, that it would be hard for people to understand but – once it starts to affect me and my livelihood – I have to speak up about my truth.”

The Smith family – including Jaden, who introduced the hip hop singer to Jada in 2015 – are still important to Alsina. In the interview, he had nothing but praise for them, gushing, “I love those people literally like my family. I don’t have a bad thing to say about them. They are beautiful people.”

Yee, however, attempted to probe a little deeper. Referencing Jada, she asked, “Is it disappointing that she never addressed it to you, because like you said, you lost out on opportunities?” But Alsina refused to take the bait, replying, “I really can’t get into the thought of that because I am only responsible for myself, right?”

Following the interview’s publication, the internet was understandably abuzz. After all, Alsina was the first person to seemingly confirm the rumors of an open marriage. But when Page Six contacted Pinkett-Smith’s representatives for comment, their response was short and succinct. It simply read, “Absolutely not true!!” And just in case that wasn’t enough, her husband’s representation told The Sun Online that the claims were “wrong.”

In the face of the Smiths’ denials, Alsina doubled down on his comments with a long Instagram post. “I get it,” he wrote. “Not only do I get it but I’m also sorry you feel that way. But the only attack here is against the invisible walls of silent societal construct and ‘code’ we place upon each other and upon ourselves, hidden behind the desires of others approval and acceptance.”

Alsina continued, “My heart has no malice or hate toward anyone on this planet.” The hip hop star then noted that he accepts the public are allowed their opinions on the matter, even if they differ from his own. He concluded, “I just simply want the chains off and I’m willing to die to get there. The gift of freedom is yours to have, God promises us that, but only if you’re willing.”

Alsina went on to make another bold claim: the Smith family were apparently aware of the content of his interview before it was published. In fact, he claims they knew exactly what was coming and therefore had time to prepare themselves. “No one was side-swiped by any conversation,” he wrote. “Everyone got courtesy calls time in advance.”

Eventually, on July 2, Jada personally spoke out on the situation. She posted a short tweet that read, “There’s some healing that needs to happen, so I’m bringing myself to The Red Table.” Eight days later, Jada and Will released a special episode of Red Table Talk, in which they addressed Alsina’s claims head on. And the content was surprising.

Jada explained, “Four and a half years ago, I started a friendship with August and we actually became really, really good friends. And it all started with him just needing some help, me wanting to help his health, his mental health.” Not only that, but she also revealed that the friendship began when she and Will were going through their separation.

“I got into an entanglement with August,” admitted Jada, who was then prompted by Will to be more specific and call it a relationship. She replied, “Yes, it was a relationship. Absolutely. I was in a lot of pain. I was very broken.” However, she said the relationship didn’t make her happy and she realized that she and Will couldn’t separate from each other emotionally, no matter how hard they tried.

The relationship did help her in some ways, though. She said, “Through that particular journey, I learned so much about myself and was able to really confront a lot of emotional immaturity, emotional insecurity and I was really able to do some really deep healing.” According to Jada, Alsina then cut off communication with her when he saw she was gravitating back toward Will.

So, Jada did admit that there had been a relationship, which hopefully gave Alsina some comfort. But it seems the Smith family’s dramas don’t stop at the question of Will and Jada’s rumored open marriage. The two have also faced some pretty big challenges when it comes to parenting as well. In fact, Jada was definitely taken aback when her son, Jaden, came to her with a truly heartbreaking request.