The relationship of married actors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith has come under scrutiny in recent years following Jada Pinkett Smith’s remarks about a romantic “entanglement” with another man and her husband’s infamous slap in her defense at the Oscars last month.
While rumors have circulated several times that the famous couple was headed for divorce, both have not given any indication that their marriage will end. Still, Will Smith and his wife have commented several times over the years on the prospect of a divorce.
The pair were married in December 1997 when Jada Pinkett Smith was already two months pregnant with their first child, Jaden Smith. It was Will Smith’s second marriage after his first union with Sheree Zampino ended in divorce, a development he once called “the worst thing in my adult life” on an episode of his wife’s Facebook Watch show Red Table Talk.
That experience appears to have shaped his approach to marriage and divorce.
“Divorce can’t be an option. With Jada, I stood up in front of God and said, ‘Til death do us part,'” he told MTV News in 2006. “So there are two possible outcomes. One, we are going to be together ’til death, or two, I am dead.”
Jada Pinkett Smith has expressed similar views. “I told Will from the gate, I said let me tell you something, ‘If you marry me, know this: we’re gonna be together. We’re going to be under the same roof’… for me personally, I knew that there was no reason that he and I would ever [divorce],” she said of a conversation before their wedding on a 2018 episode of Red Table Talk.
