Jada Pinkett Smith credits Will Smith‘s infamous Oscars slap with saving their marriage.
During an interview with Daily Mail, Jada shared her thoughts on Will slapping Chris Rock during the 94th Academy Awards ceremony, admitting that the moment helped her come to the realization that she “will never leave him.”
“That moment of the shit hitting the fan is when you see where you really are,” she shared. “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?”
Jada continued, “I call it the ‘holy slap’ now because so many positive things came after it,” adding that she was glad she attended the ceremony after “nearly” missing it.
Pinkett Smith’s comments arrive weeks after she expressed her desire to be with Will “forever” in an interview with Drew Barrymore.
“We’re staying together forever,” Jada responded when asked if the couple plans to reconcile. She then said, “I tried. We tried,” alluding to a previous conversation with NBC News in October when she told Hoda Kotba that her and Will had been living “completely separate lives” since 2016.
Will reiterated Jada’s wishes to patch things up during a surprise appearance at his wife’s book tour in October.
“I just really wanted to come out and just be here and hold it down for you the way you have held it down for me,” the Oscar-winner told her in front of the audience. “We have had a very, very long and tumultuous [relationship]. We call it ‘brutiful.’ It was brutal and beautiful at the same time.”
