Jada Pinkett Smith has apparently put us all back in the group chat after claiming that her marriage to Will Smith was resuscitated when he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars.
“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,” she told the Daily Mail’s You magazine in an interview published over the weekend.
The Matrix star went on to reveal that she “nearly didn’t even attend” the awards show at ll, but added she’s “glad” she did.
Jada says she calls the infamous moment the “holy slap” now “because so many positive things came after it”.
At the 94th Academy Awards in March 2022, the Bad Boys actor walked on stage and struck comedian Chris Rock in the face after the comedian made a joke about Jada’s shaved head.
At the time, Chris compared her shaved head, which came after her alopecia diagnosis, to Demi Moore in the 1997 film G.I. Jane.
Following the controversial incident, Will was banned from attending the Academy events for 10 years.
The famous couple has been married since 1997, but while promoting her book Worthy in October, the Red Table Talk host admitted that the two have been separated since 2016.
“By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying,” she explained to NBC’s Hoda Kotb. “I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.”
Despite all the drama, Jada went on to tell the Daily Mail that the moment “shit [hit] the fan” ultimately helped bring the two closer together.
“Who knows where our relationship would be if [the slap] hadn’t happened?” she said.