According to Jada Pinkett Smith, she “really didn’t want to get married” to Will Smith at the beginning of their relationship.
As a matter of fact, the “Matrix” actress, who is currently the subject of much ridicule following Will Smith’s infamous Oscars smack-down of Chris Rock and the Academy’s decision to ban him from the ceremony for ten years, admitted that she had “cried down the freaking aisle” before her 1997 wedding to the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” star.
“I was under so much pressure, you know, being a young actress, being young, and I was just, like, pregnant and I just didn’t know what to do,” declared Pinkett Smith, 50, in a freshly exhumed snippet from her “Red Table Talk” Facebook series. “I never wanted to be married.”
In a newly resurfaced video from 2018, Pinkett Smith candidly recalls her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, also known as “Gammy,” 68, forcing her and Smith to wed after she became pregnant with their first son together, Jaden, now 23 years old.
“I really didn’t wanna get married,” Pinkett Smith restated while seated around the circular table with her mom, as well as Smith, 53, and their daughter Willow, 21.
“We only got married because Gammy was crying,” a chuckling Smith informed Willow.
“It was almost as if Gammy was like, ‘You have to get married, so let’s talk about the wedding,’” said Pinkett Smith, prompting Banfield-Norris to confess, “I remember feeling very strongly and wanting you guys to be married.”
Pinkett Smith’s mother married her father, Robsol Pinkett Jr., at the tender age of 18 when she became pregnant with her daughter. “I do remember [wanting you and Will to get married] but I don’t remember your rejection of the idea of marriage,” Banfield-Norris added. “I remember the rejection of the idea of a wedding but not of a marriage.”
“And now Gammy did go to Will, crying about ‘I don’t want a wedding,’ and now I’m being forced to have a wedding,” she said. “I just wanted it to be the two of us on a mountain because I was like: ‘This is serious business.’”
Jada and Will tied the knot at the Cloisters Castle in a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland, where Jada grew up. Pinkett Smith and her mother, Jada Pinkett Smith, were candid about the venue’s shortcomings despite the picturesque setting. “The wedding was horrible,” Banfield-Norris conceded. “It was a mess. Jada was sick, she was very unpleasant … She didn’t cooperate with anything.”
Laughing, Pinkett Smith agreed, saying, “And I was so upset that I had to have a wedding. I was so pissed I went crying down the freaking aisle. I cried the whole way down the aisle.”
For his part as Venus and Serena Williams’ father, Richard Williams, 80, in the film “King Richard,” Smith was no less than giddy on the day of his and Jennifer’s nuptials.
“There wasn’t a day in my life that I wanted anything other than being married and having a family,” he said during the episode. “From literally 5 years old, I was picturing what my family would be.”
Amidst her vehement opposition to their marriage, Pinkett Smith and Smith eventually agreed that getting married was “the right call.” With respect to Pinkett Smith’s protest about a wedding, Banfield-Norris apologized for being “selfish” in insisting on a lavish ceremony because she is her only child.
The resurfaced “Red Table Talk” tape follows on the heels of additional footage from the couple’s troubled recent past. According to a 2019 Instagram Live video, Smith appeared to be annoyed that his wife had broadcast him on social media without his permission.
“Don’t just start filming me without asking me,” said Smith in response to Pinkett Smith showing his face on camera while asking, “Would you say [therapist Esther Perel] has been instrumental in you and I redefining our relationship?”
And when the actress dismissed her husband’s upset as “foolishness,” Smith retorted: “My social media presence is my bread and butter. So you can’t just use me for social media. Don’t just start rolling; I’m standing in my house. Don’t start rolling.”