Jada Pinkett Smith’s “Red Table Talk” returned to Facebook Watch on Monday and the actress was joined by husband Will Smith who opened up about falling in love with his wife, “horrible” wedding memories and the communication issues they had early on in the marriage.
“For years and years there’s been a lot of speculation about us and our family has been pretty secretive, not secretive, just private,” said Will after sitting down with Jada, her mom Adrienne Banfield-Jones and daughter Willow. “It’s been private. We have created a marital and family paradigm that has been speculated about for a lot of years, so I’m excited to tell the truth.”
TooFab breaks down how the conversation unfolded…get into it below.
On falling in love with his wife:
Jada first caught Will’s eye after he saw her on “A Different World.” According to Will, his “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” costar Alfonso Ribeiro offered to hook them up.
“I recognize when I see a person, if our relationship can be exponential,” said Will. “When I saw you on ‘Different World,’ it was that thing. The bell rings and I knew there was something in our energy that was magic.”
But when he went to a taping of her show, he ended up meeting another woman there instead: first wife Sheree Fletcher.
“We did not have an affair while he was married,” Jada interjected at this point.
“The next night me and Sheree went to dinner, I sat down with Sheree and it was one of the most bizarre emotions I ever had, after we had that talk,” Will recalled. “I remember I had to get up from dinner when I had a realization that I wasn’t with the person I was supposed to be with. I went in the bathroom at The Palm and I broke down in tears.”
Sheree decided to divorce him on Valentine’s Day. Once he signed off, his first call was Jada.
“I literally walked out from there, I called Jada, I said, ‘Hey Jada, what’s up, it’s Will … are you seeing anybody?’ She said, ‘Uh, no,’ and I said, ‘Cool, you’re seeing me now.’”
On the “horrible” wedding memories:
Two years into their relationship, Jada got pregnant with the couple’s first child together.
“I knew the moment after the act that I was pregnant,” Jada remembered. “I knew that night, he didn’t believe me, but I knew.”
“It was literally four seconds after we had sex,” said Will. “She’s like, ‘I’m pregnant.’ I was like, ‘Babe, I think scientifically you’re not pregnant yet.”
Jada said she really did not want to get married, with Will saying they only did it “because Gammy was crying.”
Banfield-Jones apologized for not respecting her daughter’s wishes, adding that the wedding itself was “horrible.”
“It was a mess. Jada was sick, she was very unpleasant, she didn’t cooperate with anything,” Jada’s mother recalled.
“I was so upset that I had to have a wedding, I was so pissed,” added Jada. “I went crying down the freaking aisle, I cried the whole way.”
On the communication issues they had early on in their relationship:
Before the two tied the knot, Smith recalled a disagreement they had at a party they were having at their house. Jada swore at him in front of their guests and his son Trey. He retaliated by swatting at her with a newspaper and taking her aside to another room.
“I said, ‘Jada, this is the deal, I grew up in a household where I watched my father punch my mother in the face and I will not create a house, a space, an interaction with a person where there is profanity and violence,’” said Will. “If you have to talk to me like that, we can’t be together. We’re not going to use any profanity in our interactions, we’re not going to be violent, I can’t do it.”
According to Will, it would be 20 years before they swore at each other again.
