Jada Pinkett Smith says she didn’t want to wed Will Smith
Jun 28, 2019, 3:13 PM | Updated: 3:14 pm
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
Jada Pinkett-Smith and her husband Will Smith are all smiles now, but when they were dating, Jada says tying the knot with her now-hubby didn’t even cross her mind.
“I never wanted to get married,” Pinkett Smith told People in this week’s cover story.
“But my mother was like, ‘You have to get married’ – she’s so old school – and Will wanted a family,” Pinkett Smith continued. “So I said, ‘All right, maybe it’s something I should do.”
The couple started dating in 1995, and she admits that even after she got pregnant with their son Jaden two years later, she wasn’t necessarily down for a traditional wedding.
“[My grandmother] freaking called Will and cried her freaking eyes out, so then I had to have a wedding and that was infuriating,” says Jada, who reveals she was in her first trimester and experiencing morning sickness when she said “I do” on New Year’s Eve, 1997.
Jada now says marrying Will was a great decision, but back then, she didn’t see the happy ending.
“I had never seen a happy marriage,” she says. “I adored Will, I f***ing adored him, but I just didn’t want to be married.”
And now, even though the two have been legally married for 21 years, Jada says she and Will don’t still subscribe to a traditional marriage.
“It’s more of a life partnership… I don’t own him. He doesn’t own me. He has to be his own person first, and vice versa… Love is freedom.”
Copyright © 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
