Earlier than Will and Jada even received collectively, he had emotions for her. He was on the lookout for her on the set of “A Different World” when he initially met Zampino. “I didn’t meet Jada that day . . . We had all these near misses,” he mentioned on a 2018 episode of “Red Table Talk.”

He and Jada did not truly meet till 1994 when she auditioned for a job on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” She did not get the gig, however when the 2 linked up for a dinner with pals throughout his marriage to Zampino, they commiserated over each of their respective “dysfunctional” relationships and gave one another recommendation. “When everyone else left, Jada and I stayed, and I was surprised at how smart she was. Generally, people don’t arouse your intellect and your loins,” Will Advised Rolling Stone in 1998 concerning the dinner that modified every part. Will later mentioned on “Red Table Talk” that the connection was “real, unique, beautiful power” and confirmed him what his life might be like.

The pair knew they’d a connection, and that is why they made a concerted effort to keep away from one another. “I didn’t talk to him for six months,” Jada advised Rolling Stone. “When you know there’s a connection, you think, ‘This is not something I want to fool around with.’ . . . It was like a secret we had. I knew, but I didn’t get any signal from him.”

After Will and Zampino divorced in 1995, Will known as Jada, and so they received collectively for actual. They married in 1997 and now have two children collectively, Jaden and Willow.

Will and Jada have had their very own relationship ups and downs by the years. “We decided that we were going to separate for a period of time, and you go figure out how to make yourself happy, and I’ll figure out how to make myself happy,” Will mentioned in 2020 on “Red Table Talk” about their separation a number of years prior. Jada engaged in a romantic relationship with singer August Alsina on the time, however the relationship was short-lived, and the couple in the end knew they nonetheless wished to be collectively.

Will opened as much as GQ in late 2021 about how they’ve had durations of nonmonogamy of their marriage as a result of that is what works for them. “There were significant endless discussions about, what is relational perfection?” he advised GQ, including, “What is the perfect way to interact as a couple? And for the large part of our relationship, monogamy was what we chose, not thinking of monogamy as the only relational perfection.”

Two years later, Jada is now revealing that she and Can have been separated since 2016, per At this time. In an unique clip of her upcoming interview with Hoda Kotb, Jada mentioned that she and Can have been residing “completely separate lives” for the previous seven years, although they’re nonetheless legally married. When requested why she did not beforehand share their relationship standing, Jada mentioned it was “just not being ready yet … Still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in partnership … In regards to, how do we present that to people? We hadn’t figured that out.”

Of the explanation for his or her separation, Jada defined, “Why it fractured… that — that’s a lot of things … By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying. I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.”

Jada admitted to contemplating a authorized divorce, although she’s by no means been in a position to undergo with it. “I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce. We will work through … whatever,” she famous. “I just haven’t been able to break that promise.”