CHENNAI: Entertainer and entrepreneur Jada Pinkett Smith, also known as half of one of Hollywood’s most famous marriages, has revealed in a video interview that she and her spouse Will Smith have actually been separated for the last seven years. This is despite numerous red-carpet appearances, overshare moments on social media and talk shows, and an infamous slap at the Oscars just two years ago. The couple aren’t divorced but have been living completely separate lives, according to Pinkett Smith.
As a consuming public, we are not easily shocked. Reality TV, social media infamy, virality and other Warholesque 15-minutes of fame experiences are such a part of global culture now that it takes a lot to really stun us. Fifteen or twenty years ago, people would have felt betrayed that a couple they looked up to — who set the equivalent of the contemporary term #couplegoals — had been living out a lie in the public eye. Now, that the Smiths have a sham marriage is less shocking to us than it is, well, disgusting.
Disgusting because they benefited financially from the premise that they were a power couple long after the union had disintegrated. Disgusting because Pinkett Smith’s personal brand has been about being willing to dig deep and inspire others to do the same. This isn’t about privacy; this is about the fact that they pretended. Deliberately and consistently.
The revelation is timed around the release of her memoir (Smith released one last year, but did not share in it that his marriage was a façade). This should tell you a lot about how hard it is to sell books, even with celebrity status. That industry fact doesn’t diminish the other obvious thing: which is that Jada Pinkett Smith is probably, in the clinical sense, a narcissist. That she chose to drop this bombshell to coincide with a book’s publication, rather than a film release or a new business venture — both of which would be more lucrative, and even more so because of the buzz around this disclosure — is the kind of bizarreness that only makes sense within the nightmare of a narcissistic biome.
Smith, meanwhile, has made self-flagellating public statements in response to his spouse’s exposé. Pinkett Smith now says, with now-unmistakable disingenuousness, that they are working on their relationship and may even begin living together again. This is the kind of morsel-throwing that would have worked in the 1990s when celebrityhood could be attained only by a few and the lives of celebrities seemed desirably enigmatic. In contemporary perception, Pinkett Smith has not just discredited herself but has also possibly outed herself as an abuser, an emotionally violent partner to a severely co-dependent one. She may be in charge of her marriage’s dynamics, but she has lost control of her narrative about it.
Survivors of interpersonal abuse rarely see relatable scenarios play out on public stages, though they are sometimes hinted at after the fact. The Smiths have offered the opportunity. In watching them, some may recognise themselves as survivors. If someone saves themself because of the ugly mirror that Pinkett Smith has held raised with such self-unawareness, that’s a sort of saving grace.