- POPSUGAR Australia
- Celebrity
- All of Will Smith’s Leading Ladies Before Marrying Jada Pinkett Smith
All of Will Smith’s Leading Ladies Before Marrying Jada Pinkett Smith
Getty / Jim Spellman
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith have long been one of the most fashionable couples in Hollywood, not to mention one of the most loved-up pairs. The actors, who’ve been married for more than 20 years, have had their share of ups and downs, making adjustments to their marriage to make it work for them.
In a 2018 episode of “Red Table Talk,” Will opened up about the first time they split during their marriage. The breakup stemmed from Jada’s 40th birthday party after Will hired Mary J. Blige to perform and made a video of never-before-seen moments of Jada’s late grandmother. “She’s like, it’s my birthday and she told me that the party was the most ridiculous display of my ego,” Will recalled. “Crushed, right? And to this day I know I was crushed because it was true. It wasn’t a party for her. When she called me on that, that’s when I snapped and that’s the only time you ever heard me snap. I snapped in front of Willow, and Willow starts crying and she’s like, ‘Just figure it out.'”
And now, in Jada’s new memoir, “Worthy,” out Oct. 17, Jada reveals she and Will have been separated since 2016, according to People. Reflecting on the infamous Oscars slap between Will and Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards, Jada wrote, “We had been living separate lives and were there as family, not as husband and wife. But when I hear Will yell ‘wife’ in the chaos of the moment, an internal shift of ‘Oh sh*t . . . I am his wife!’ happens instantly.”
But before Will wed Jada, he publicly dated a few other women in Hollywood. While there may have been other dates and flings here and there, he only had a couple of confirmed relationships (and one other marriage). Keep reading to see who Will dated in the early ’90s before settling down with Jada.
Getty / Amy Sussman
Will Smith and Garcelle Beauvais (Early 1990s)
In the early days of Will’s career come-up, he and Garcelle Beauvais were frequent collaborators, Beauvais having starred with him in a few episodes of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” between 1992 and 1995 and “Wild Wild West” in 1999. Beauvais mentioned she briefly dated Will in a 2020 episode of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” saying, “He was hot. He was a bachelor, I was single, you know, it happens in Hollywood.” Speaking directly to his ex-wife, Sheree Zampino, Beauvais dropped the bombshell that she dated Will before Zampino did, and the three then joked that they were in a throuple, per Entertainment Tonight.
Beauvais and Will continued their working relationship, even after their split, and seem to be on good terms. In 2018, she posted a picture on social media of their onscreen kiss in “Wild Wild West” to wish the actor a happy 50th birthday, which garnered backlash from fans who felt it inappropriate considering Will is married, according to BET. In the end, she took it down, explaining she thought it was all in good fun and meant no harm.
Getty / Ron Galella, Ltd.
Will Smith and Sheree Zampino (1991-1995)
Will met actor Sheree Zampino on the set of “A Different World” in 1991, but he was actually aiming to meet Jada. He mentioned in a 2018 episode of Jada’s show “Red Table Talk” that he met Zampino that day on set instead. “The dude that was going to introduce me to Jada was with another girl and I was like, ‘Who is that?'” he recalled. He was taken with Zampino but didn’t ask for her number right away. Zampino told Hollywood Unlocked in 2019 that Will actually asked someone else for her number – but the two eventually linked up.
Will and Zampino got married in 1992 and had their son, Trey, in November of that year, but after a few years of marriage, Will had a revelation. “I wasn’t with the person I was supposed to be with,” he said on “Red Table Talk” about his realization that he loved Jada, adding that he had a breakdown in a public bathroom over the realization. Ultimately, Zampino was the one who filed for divorce (on Valentine’s Day, too) and they divorced in 1995.
Since then, they’ve been devoted to coparenting Trey, though Will admitted on “Red Table Talk” the divorce was hard. “Divorce was the worst thing in my adult life,” he said. “Divorce was the ultimate failure for me. I’ve been hurt a lot in my adult life, but I don’t think anything touches the failure of getting divorced from my 2-year-old son’s mother.”
He, Zampino, and Jada have worked at their relationship over the years, though, creating a blended family that works for them. They’ve all spoken about coparenting on various occasions, and Jada has even had Zampino on one of her live Q&As to share tips on how to coparent effectively.
Getty / VALERIE MACON
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith (1995-Now)
Before Will and Jada even got together, he had feelings for her. He was looking for her on the set of “A Different World” when he originally met Zampino. “I didn’t meet Jada that day . . . We had all these near misses,” he said on a 2018 episode of “Red Table Talk.”
He and Jada didn’t actually meet until 1994 when she auditioned for a role on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” She didn’t get the gig, but when the two linked up for a dinner with friends during his marriage to Zampino, they commiserated over both of their respective “dysfunctional” relationships and gave each other advice. “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 told Rolling Stone in 1998 about the dinner that changed everything. Will later said on “Red Table Talk” that the connection was “real, unique, beautiful power” and showed him what his life could be like.
The pair knew they had a connection, and that’s why they made a concerted effort to stay away from each other. “I didn’t talk to him for six months,” Jada told 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 called Jada, and they got together for real. They married in 1997 and now have two kids together, Jaden and Willow.
Will and Jada have had their own relationship ups and downs through 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 said in 2020 on “Red Table Talk” about their separation a few years prior. Jada engaged in a romantic relationship with singer August Alsina at the time, but the relationship was short-lived, and the couple ultimately knew they still wanted to be together.
Will opened up to GQ in late 2021 about how they’ve had periods of nonmonogamy in their marriage because that’s what works for them. “There were significant endless discussions about, what is relational perfection?” he told GQ, adding, “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 Will have been separated since 2016, per Today. In an exclusive clip of her upcoming interview with Hoda Kotb, Jada said that she and Will have been living “completely separate lives” for the past seven years, though they’re still legally married. When asked why she didn’t previously share their relationship status, Jada said 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 reason for their separation, Jada explained, “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 considering a legal divorce, though she’s never been able to go through 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 noted. “I just haven’t been able to break that promise.”