Despite their newly-disclosed separation, Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith remain committed to their marriage.
Jada dropped by The Drew Barrymore Show this week to promote her memoir, Worthy, and assured the host that she and her husband won’t be formally ending their relationship anytime soon.
“We’re staying together forever,” she says in the clip, which can be viewed on Entertainment Weekly’s website here. “I tried. We tried.”
The Red Table Talk host’s remarks come just days after she shared photos of herself and Will celebrating Thanksgiving with their family.
“A perfect Thanksgiving Day,” she wrote on Instagram. “I hope yours was as well.”
In her book Worthy, released last month, Jada revealed she and Will had been separated since 2016, despite maintaining the appearance of a committed couple. The pair has been married since 1997.
Though she said that she and the King Richard actor “live separately,” she clarified that they are not legally divorced — and hinted that may not be the case forever.
“I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce,” she told NBC’s Hoda Kotb in an October interview. “We will work through ... whatever. I just haven’t been able to break that promise.”
Like many Hollywood couples, Jada and Will had been subjected to rumours of martial strife on several occasions.
Still, the status of their relationship had come under renewed speculation amid the global media frenzy that erupted at the Academy Awards last year when Will slapped comedian Chris Rock for cracking a joke at Jada’s expense.
In a conversation with actor Cynthia Erivo shortly after Worthy was published, Jada said fans and the media may have misunderstood “my communication” about the marriage, noting she’s had to “learn to love [Smith] unconditionally.”
“I’ve had to learn to love him beyond the title of ‘husband’ and all the expectations and all the romanticism that comes with that, and learn to love him as he is – with it all,” she said, according to The Independent.
“With his bright light, and the shadow, and love him right there. He did not come to this Earth just to be my husband.”