“Keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth.”
Following the slap of the century at the 2022 Academy Awards, those words that actor Will Smith shouted to comedian Chris Rock about his supposed wife (we’ll get into that later) ruined, or severely halted, Smith’s career.
All over actress and new author Jada Pinkett Smith.
The ensuing drama that played out between the Smiths about their marriage, Pinkett Smith’s “entanglement” with R&B singer August Alsina and the “are-they-married-aren’t-they-married” debacle leaves a bad taste in anyone’s mouth, including mine.
So in order to understand how we got here let’s take it back — way back — to 1997.
Pinkett Smith became pregnant in 1997 — after dating Smith for around two years — with her and Smith’s son, Jaden, and felt pressure from her mother to marry Smith.
“I was under so much pressure, you know, being a young actress, and I was just, like, pregnant and I just didn’t know what to do,” Pinkett Smith said on her “Red Table Talk” talk show. “I never wanted to be married.”
She literally cried down the aisle on her and Smith’s Dec. 31, 1997 wedding day.
Conversely, on the same episode of “Red Table Talk,” Smith said he couldn’t wait for their wedding day.
“There wasn’t a day in my life that I wanted anything other than being married and having a family,” Smith said. “From literally five years old, I was picturing what my family would be.”
So going into their marriage, you have two people with extremely different views on the actual wedding; one extremely hesitant and one bursting with excitement. The concoction of their marriage doesn’t have good ingredients to start.
But from their wedding until 2020, everything was fairly smooth in Smith and Pinkett Smith’s relationship to the public eye — that is until Alsina entered the picture.
Alsina — a c-list R&B singer — has long dropped hints that he and Pinkett Smith engaged in a romantic relationship while Pinkett Smith was still married to Smith.
In July 10, 2020, Pinkett Smith confirmed she and Alsina engaged in an “entanglement” on “Red Table Talk.” For those that don’t know what the hell an “entanglement” means: Pinkett Smith cheated on Smith with Alsina.
At the end of that episode of “Red Table Talk,” Smith and Pinkett Smith took inspiration from the former’s film series “Bad Boys” and said in unison, “We ride together, we die together, bad marriage for life.”
I don’t get it. I don’t get why either of them can admit that this marriage has caused them a lot more pain than good and still both persist in not getting divorced.
Staying in a relationship that’s not only toxic for Smith, but now for his and Pinkett Smith’s public personas is just a lose-lose for the both of them.
But Pinkett Smith’s and Alsina’s relationship gives me more red flags than just the obvious one of infidelity.
On top of that, Alsina has opened up in the past about his drug and sex addictions and trauma, and having a relationship with a woman 21 years older than him screams of red flags to me.
But it continues to get worse.
Along with the infamous 2022 slap to Rock, Pinkett Smith has repeatedly talked about her relationship with the deceased rapper Tupac Shakur.
She recently claimed that Shakur proposed to her in jail, while he was serving a prison sentence at Rikers Island in Bronx, New York, for sexually assaulting a former fan named Ayanna Jackson, and has called Shakur her “soulmate.”
Shakur has been dead for over 25 years. I bet every time Pinkett Smith brings up his name, he rolls over in his grave, or in a villa in Havana, Cuba.
The reason I’m writing this, and the reason for all of Pinkett Smith’s recent claims, is her media tour following the publication of her memoir, “Worthy.”
Pinkett Smith appeared on NBC to discuss her and Smith’s relationship on top of the contents in her memoir.
And boy did she spill the tea.
For starters, Pinkett Smith claimed in a “Today” show interview with Hoda Kotb that she took the psychedelic drug ayahuasca, which was a “turning point” in her mental health. She claimed that she thought the slap between Smith and Rock was a skit and the most absurd claim of them all — her and Smith have been separated since 2016.
She claims her and Smith live completely separate lives and have been everything but legally separated since then.
I call bullshit.
For starters, Smith’s heartbreak on “Red Table Talk” when she told him about her affair with Alsina was so evident on his face, it became a meme. Also, why would they appear on red carpets together? And why in the world would Will say “my wife” in “keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth,” if they had been separated for nearly six years at that point.
I don’t know why Pinkett Smith would claim this or even what Smith thinks about this, but the whole relationship is an entanglement of people with different beliefs and massive egos.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go use a neuralizer on myself, “Men in Black” style.
