PHOTOSJada Pinkett-Smith Reveals That She Didn’t Want to Marry Husband Will Smith
June 28 2019, Published 3:45 p.m. ET
Jada Pinkett-Smith was not always convinced that she was cut out for the married life! While hosting her Facebook Watch’s Red Table Talk show on Friday, June 28, the actress revealed that she didn't always want to marry Will Smith.
Will, 50, started dating Jada, 47, in 1995, shortly after he divorced his first wife, Sheree Zampino, who he shares son, Trey Smith.
Two years into their relationship, the couple found out that they were expecting their first child together — Jaden Smith, now 21 — and the idea of marriage emerged.
“I never wanted to get married,” Jada revealed on Red Table Talk. “But my mother was like, ‘You have to get married’ — she’s so old school — and Will wanted a family. So I said, ‘All right, maybe it’s something I should do.'”
The actress had no intention of having an extravagant wedding ceremony but her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Jones, had different ideas of how her daughter's special day should go.
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“My mother freaking called Will and cried her freaking eyes out, so then I had to have a wedding and that was infuriating,” Jada said of the couple's wedding in 1997 on New Year's Eve in Baltimore, Maryland, before mentioning that she was in her first trimester and battling morning sickness at the time.
Although the Girls Trip star admitted that she now has no regrets, Jada explained that at the time she didn't believe in happy endings. “I had never seen a happy marriage,” she said. “I adored Will, I f**king adored him, but I just didn’t want to be married.”
Even after being married for two decades, the couple still doesn’t refer to each other as husband and wife. “It’s more of a life partnership… I don’t own him. He doesn’t own me. He has to be his own person first, and vice versa," she said. "Love is freedom.”
What do you think of Jada not wanting to marry Will back in the day? Let us know in the comments below.
