Jada Pinkett Smith claimed Chris Rock once asked her out on a date when divorce rumors about her and husband Will Smith were swirling.
The 52-year-old actress has been busy dropping bombshells during her promotional tour for her upcoming memoir Worthy – including the news that she and Will have been separated for 7 years – and in an interview with People, she said Chris called her up one summer to shoot his shot.
‘I think every summer all the reports would come out that me and Will were getting a divorce,’ Jada began. ‘And this particular summer, Chris, he thought that we were getting a divorce.
‘So he called me and basically he was like, “I’d love to take you out,”‘ she recalled. ‘And I was like, “What do you mean?” He was like, “Well, aren’t you and Will getting a divorce?” I was like, “No, Chris, those are just rumors.”
‘He was appalled. And he profusely apologized and that was that.’
Bombshells: Jada Pinkett Smith claimed Chris Rock once asked her out on a date when divorce rumors about her and husband Will Smith were swirling
Shoot his shot: ‘So he called me and basically he was like, “I’d love to take you out,”‘ she recalled
Divorce rumors: Jada replied: ‘And I was like, “What do you mean?” He was like, “Well, aren’t you and Will getting a divorce?” I was like, “No, Chris, those are just rumors.”
DailyMail has reached out to Chris’ reps for comment.
Jada also shared that she hasn’t spoken with Chris since the infamous Oscars slap, when Will slapped Chris after the comedian made a joke about Jada’s bald head.
‘[Do I have] any desire to talk to Chris? Here’s my desire: I just hope that all the misunderstanding around this can be cleared up and that there can be peace,’ she told the publication.
‘I talk about this in the book, I think that there might be some misunderstanding between Chris and I as far as the 2016 Oscars. I think that he might’ve taken offense, which I meant no harm in offending. That wasn’t my intention. But I do think that there’s a big misunderstanding there.’
The 2016 drama began when Will didn’t receive an Oscar nomination for his role in Concussion. This exclusion coincided with a year where no actors of color were nominated in any acting categories, prompting the emergence of the #OscarsSoWhite movement.
In response, some artists boycotted the awards show in protest, including Jada, who even called for Chris to step down as the host of that year’s ceremony.
However, Chris didn’t back out and instead made a joke about Jada during the Oscars ceremony, saying, ‘Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties – I wasn’t invited.’
Looking back, Jada said she said she was ‘not really recognizing the level of pressure [Chris] might’ve been under’ at the time.
Long time coming: Jada said she had beef with Chris back in 2016 over the #OscarsSoWhite controversy
Making amends: Jada said the pair apologized to each other shortly after the 2016 incident, but they hadn’t spoken until the 2022 Oscars fiasco, where Chris tried to apologize again, this time for the bald joke, per Jada.
‘I probably should have called him and gone, ‘Hey, are you okay? And just know that although I’m speaking out about the Oscars, I do wish you the best and I just want you to know that,’ me taking the time to have called him and said that, just to touch base,’ she old People. ‘But his feelings might’ve been hurt.’
She said the pair apologized to each other shortly after the 2016 incident, but they hadn’t spoken until the 2022 Oscars fiasco, where Chris tried to apologize again, this time for the bald joke, per Jada.
‘Chris came down to the end of the stage and tried to apologize to me. He said, “I didn’t mean you any harm.” I said, “I can’t talk about this now, Chris. This is some old s—.”‘
As for her reaction to the joke, Jada said, ‘I mean, that’s what comedians do.’
‘I would just have to say that I am not really here to make any judgment on how people decide to express themselves and express their art. I’ll say that several times I’ve had my feelings hurt, for sure. I’ve had my feelings hurt a lot by Chris. But at the end of the day, too, being in the spotlight, it comes with the territory.’
Mea Culpa: Jada said Chris came to apologize after his bald head joke duirng the Oscars
Big reveal: In the same interview, Jada also revealed that she and Will have secretly been separated for the last seven years
In the same interview, Jada also revealed that she and Will have secretly been separated for the last seven years – as she admitted that the pair, who tied the knot in 1997, are still trying to ‘figure out’ what the future of their marriage looks like.
Speaking with Hoda on the Today Show on Wednesday, Jada explained why her marriage to Will broke down, divulging: ‘By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying. I think we were both still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.’
Jada – who admitted in 2020 that she’d had an affair with singer August Alsina – said she considered a legal divorce but could never go through with it, candidly revealing that she made a ‘promise’ to her husband that she would never give him a ‘reason’ to get divorced.
‘I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce,’ she continued. ‘We will work through whatever. And I just haven’t been able to break that promise.’
‘But you still live separately?’ Hoda probed, prompting Jada to confirm ‘we live separately’.
Speaking to People, Jada admitted the pair were in fact living separately when her husband slapped comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars in 2022, when he strode onto the stage in a burst of fury over a joke that had been made about his wife’s bald hairstyle.
She noted that no permanent decisions have been made about the future of her marriage, explaining that she and Will are ‘still figuring it out’.
‘We’ve been doing some really heavy-duty work together,’ she said. ‘We just got deep love for each other and we are going to figure out what that looks like.’
Jada went on to praise her children – Jaden, 25, Willow, 22, and Trey, 30, who is Will’s son from a previous relationship – for standing by her during this rocky time in her relationship.
