Will Smith appeared to slap Chris Rock at the 94th annual Oscars before he yelled at the comedian to “keep my wife’s name out your f***ing mouth”.
It quickly became the most talked-about moment of the evening with the pair initially appearing to laugh off the tense moment.
The altercation came after Rock said: “Jada, I love you. GI Jane 2, can’t wait to see you,” referring to Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith and her shaved head.
The comment prompted Smith to walk up on stage and hit the comedian, a reaction that has not been confirmed to be an act or not.
Will and Jada have had very public ups and downs during their 28-year relationship, so where do they stand now?
Will and Jada met after she auditioned for the role of Will’s girlfriend on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. While she did not get the part, the pair hit it off – despite Will being married to Sheree Zampino at the time, with who he shares son Trey.
“I had a realisation I wasn’t with the person I was supposed to be with,” he told Jada’s Red Table Talk in 2018. “I was sitting in a [bathroom] stall and I was crying and laughing uncontrollably, and I knew [Jada] was the woman I was supposed to be with.”
It wasn’t until 1995 that Will and Jada began seriously dating after Will finalised his divorce from Zampino.
Will popped the question to Jada in November 1997 before getting married just one month later in Baltimore.
Jada wasn’t initially sold on the idea of marriage. She told People in 2019: “I never wanted to get married. But my mother was like: ‘You have to get married’ – she’s so old-school – and Will wanted a family. So I said: ‘All right, maybe it’s something I should do.’”
Jada and Will’s first child together, son Jayden, was born in July 1998.
Jada and Will welcomed daughter Willow in 2000. Willow is now a singer.
After a quiet decade and a half making movies and raising their children, Jada took to Facebook to address rumours she and Will were in an open relationship.
She wrote: “Here is how I will change my statement…Will and I BOTH can do WHATEVER we want, because we TRUST each other to do so. This does NOT mean we have an open relationship…this means we have a GROWN one.”
Will addresses persistent separation rumours by clarifying the pair were not getting a divorce.
“Under normal circumstances, I don’t usually respond to foolishness. But, so many people have extended [to] me their ‘deepest condolences’ that I figured – ‘What the hell… I can be foolish, too!’ he wrote on Facebook at the time. “So, in the interest of redundant, repetitious, over and over-again-ness… Jada and I are… NOT GETTING A DIVORCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
In an episode of TIDAL’s “Rap Radar” podcast, Will said he and Jada “refer to ourselves as life partners, where you get into that space where you realise you are literally with somebody for the rest of your life. There’s no deal breakers. There’s nothing she could do – ever. Nothing that would break our relationship. She has my support till death and it feels so good to get to that space.”
August Alsina and Jada were introduced in 2015, but it wasn’t until 2020 that he claimed that he and Jada had dated while she was married and that her and Will’s marriage was open during that time.
Alsina said Will gave him and Jada his “blessing”, adding: “I actually sat down with Will and had a conversation due to the transformation from their marriage to life partnership that they’ve spoken on several times and it not involving romanticism.”
Will and Jada with their son Jayden in 2003
