Pinkett Smith also discusses the criticism she faced for rolling her eyes at Rock’s joke, which some suggested led to Smith storming the stage. This illustrates how women are judged regardless of what they do. She states, “It was easy to spin the story of how the perfect Hollywood megastar had fallen to his demise because of his imperfect wife. Blaming the woman is nothing new.”
She further questions the contradictory perception of women, asking, “How is it that a woman can be so irrelevant and culpable at the same time?” Pinkett Smith acknowledges her part in perpetuating the false narrative of being an adulterous wife who controlled her husband with a single look. She also finds humor in the idea that she had that much control over Will Smith. She states, “If I had that amount of control over Will, chile, my life would have been entirely different these damn near three decades. Real talk!“
When Pinkett Smith refers to being adulterous, she is addressing her relationship with August Alsina, which she referred to as an “entanglement” on an episode of “Red Table Talk” in 2020. The couple openly discussed the chapter of their lives that had already occurred. The conversation ended with laughter and a fist-bump, reinforcing their commitment to each other: “We ride together, we die together, bad marriage for life.”
The truth is that the Smiths were not together in the conventional sense during her time with Alsina, and they are not currently. However, they are not in an open marriage, nor are they divorced, polyamorous, or separated. They define their relationship as something unique: life partners in both family and business, maintaining a commitment to transparency. In recent years, they have lived separately, with Pinkett Smith purchasing her own home in Calabasas as a 50th birthday gift to herself.
In a way, her new home in Calabasas fulfills a long-standing dream that predates their relationship. It started when she was renovating a “tiny, old-world” farmhouse on the outskirts of Baltimore, envisioning a future with rescue dogs, cats, and a horse for her mother on the expansive land. It was during this time that Will Smith, recently divorced from his first wife, called her and asked, “You seeing anybody?” She responded, “Uhm, no.” He then declared, “Good. You seeing me now.”