Jada Pinkett Smith opens up on Oscars slap + separation from Will Smith in new book, ‘Worthy’

For nearly two years, Jada Pinkett Smith has held her silence about the infamous Oscars slap of March 2022, when her husband Will Smith walked onstage and smacked Chris Rock across the face in front of the entire world. 

Now, in newly published excerpts of her memoir Worthy, she opens up about the viral moment, writing in the book that she didn’t think what she was watching take place at the show, was real. 

“I thought, ‘This is a skit.,'” Jada said, according to an interview and portions of Worthy published by People. “I was like, ‘There’s no way that Will hit him.'”

She added, “It wasn’t until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realized it wasn’t a skit.”

Once alone after the show, the first thing she said to her husband was, “Are you okay?”

Although Jada was annoyed and unhappy by the joke Chris Rock made about her shaved head, as a result of the hair loss disease alopecia, the 52-year-old actress revealed she was “unclear” why Will became so upset — it’s not like they were together at the time. 

Still married, yes, but separated, she said. 

“We had been living separate lives and were there as family, not as husband and wife,” she wrote in the book. “But when I hear Will yell ‘wife’ in the chaos of the moment, an internal shift of Oh s*** … I am his wife! happens instantly.”

Jada wrote that in living through the incident she was reminded of her humble upbringings in the rough neighborhoods of Baltimore and that despite whatever had happened, or was about to take place, she was reminded, “Will and I are in this together.”

Jada Pinkett’s new memoir, Worthy, will be out Tuesday, October 17.