Jada Pinkett Smith is sharing insights into how the infamous Will Smith Oscars slap has contributed to strengthening her marriage.
In a recent interview, Pinkett Smith confessed that she and her husband took a public scandal to reset their relationship.
‘I almost skipped the Oscars that year, but I'm grateful I didn't,’ Pinkett Smith recalls. ‘I now refer to it as the “holy slap” because so many positive things followed.’
She is, of course, talking about the 2022 Oscars, where her husband was nominated in the Best Actor category (Will Smith won for his role in the Venus and Serena Williams tennis biopic King Richard).
The couple was seated in the front row when comedian and host Chris Rock made a joke about Pinkett Smith’s shaven head (due to alopecia). Although Smith initially appeared to laugh, his wife responded with an unamused eye-roll. Smith then took the stage and slapped Rock’s face in front of a global TV audience.
‘Keep my wife’s name out of your f****** mouth!’ Smith raged in the deathly silent auditorium. Pinkett Smith reeled. But this was the moment that remade their marriage.
‘That moment of the s*** hitting the fan is when you see where you really are,’ she says. ‘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. Who knows where our relationship would be if that hadn’t happened?’
Meanwhile, Will Smith was spotted with the mystery woman, who looks strikingly similar to his estranged wife Jada Pinkett Smith, for a second time during Miami's Art Basel events.