An Old Video Reveals Jada Pinkett Smith Wanted ‘Freedom’ In Her Marriage to Will Smith a Long Time Ago
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s relationship has been thrust into the limelight once again. There have been rumors about both Will and Jada stepping outside of their marriage for years but none were ever confirmed…until now. Jada admitted that she had an “entanglement” (relationship) with singer August Alsina. This revelation shocked some fans. But if you were paying close attention to Jada in past interviews, the news wouldn’t have been so surprising.
Jada Pinkett Smith never wanted to get married
Jada’s Facebook show Red Table Talk has let us into a lot of the personal aspects of both Will and Jada’s lives. But even before that, Jada was dropping hints about her thoughts on marriage and monogamy.
“I knew that I was not built for conventional marriage,” she once said in an interview with The Guardian. “Even the word ‘wife’: it’s a golden cage, swallow the key. Even before I was married, I was like, ‘That’ll kill me.’ And it d*mn near did!”
She wasn’t necessarily averse to marrying Will, so much as she didn’t like the institution of marriage at all.
“Will is my life partner and I could not ask for a better one. I adore him, I never want people to think it was Will I didn’t want to marry,” she told the outlet. “But I can assure you that some of the most powerful women in the world feel caged and tied, because of the sacrifices they have to make to be in that position. So I wanted to talk about how we really feel about marriage.”
Jada needed freedom
In a 2001 interview with Vibe magazine, Jada was asked what relationship advice she would give her children and she spoke about freedom.
“I probably won’t put restrictions on [Willow] in a [harsh] way, because, being female myself, I understand the type of freedom a young girl needs,” Jada said. “But when I talk about freedom, I mean you have to have a sense of responsibility. That’s very difficult in our culture, because we’re basically selling being a h*e as what it is to be a woman today. If you’re not a h*e, then you’re not really down or you’re not really hip.”
She brought up the idea of freedom again when talking to Entertainment Tonight, this time referring to her relationship with Will.
“I just felt like, I needed more freedom,” she said of a rough patch between her and Will. “And freedom in the sense of like … the public wants you to be a certain way, your family needs you in a certain way, your partner needs you to be something. And for me, that just was never … I’m really a free spirit at heart, I really am. And I always have been. And I just felt like my life had got constricted into this little box and it was strangling me, basically.”
Jada admitted that she cried for 45 days during that time.
How are Will and Jada now?
Despite publicly admitting to being involved with Alsina while still married to Will, Jada seems to be on good terms with Will. They laughed with one another throughout their recent Red Table Talk interview and even revealed their mantra, “We ride together, we die together, bad marriage for life.”
