Despite the tensions that emanated from the infamous Oscars slap of 2022, Jada Pinkett Smith says she is grateful for it.
“I call it the ‘holy slap’ now because so many positive things came after it.” she told the Daily Mail.
She says the moment after her husband of 26 years, actor Will Smith, stormed onto the stage of the Academy Awards and slapped Chris Rock’s face after he made a joke about her, was a revelation for her.
READ MORE: ‘I have failed’: Betrayal that caused Angelina Jolie to cut ties with father Jon Voight
“That moment of the s–t hitting the fan is when you see where you really are,” she said.
“After all those years trying to figure out if I would leave Will’s side, it took that slap for me to see I will never leave him. Who knows where our relationship would be if that hadn’t happened?”
The pair live apart having announced that they have in fact been separated since 2016.
READ MORE: The single sentence from Dakota Johnson that had ‘catastrophic’ impact on Ellen DeGeneres’ career
Pinkett Smith made the revelation in her new memoir, Worthy, and told US TV host Hoda Kotb the couple had not previously gone public with their separation because they were not “ready yet”.
She said they were “still trying to figure out between the two of us, how to be in partnership,” she said in a clip from her upcoming NBC News primetime special.
“How do we present that to people?” she told Kotb. “We hadn’t figured that out.”
For a daily dose of 9Honey, subscribe to our newsletter here.
However she confirmed too that they are are “staying together forever” on The Drew Barrymore show.
Pinkett Smith, 52, and Smith, 55, have been married since 1997.
Pinkett Smith said while they live in separate houses, they are not legally divorced and the actress has said they have no plans to do so.