Will Smith breaks silence on split from Jada Pinkett Smith: ‘Woke me up’

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith have secretly been separated for seven years. Photo / AP

Will Smith has finally broken his silence on his split from wife Jada Pinkett Smith, days after she made the shock revelation that the marriage ended seven years ago.

Pinkett Smith is currently on a publicity tour for her upcoming memoir Worthy, and has shared several bombshells along the way - including the fact that the pair haven’t lived together for years.

Now, in an email to the New York Times, her ex-husband has admitted her recent interviews “kind of woke him up” to the reality that she was more “resilient, clever and compassionate than [he’d] understood”. He also admitted that he was guilty of “emotional blindness” towards her “hidden nuances”.

Until now, the actor has stayed silent as his relationship has been under the spotlight. But he’s now told the New York Times, “When you’ve been with someone for more than half of your life, a sort of emotional blindness sets in, and you can all too easily lose your sensitivity to their hidden nuances and subtle beauties.”

The couple married in 1997 and have since then been seen as one of the strongest pairings in Hollywood history, sharing two children, Jaden, 25, and Willow, 22.

Smith’s words come days after his estranged wife left fans shocked with the revelation the pair had secretly split in 2016.

Pinkett Smith opened up about the separation on NBC News with host Hoda Kotb, revealing that the marriage had broken down because by that point, they were both “exhausted with trying”.

She also clarified claims the couple were swingers and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air star was secretly gay.

Hoda Kotb interviews Jada Pinkett Smith. Photo / Getty Images

“I mean, a million things were out there,” Pinkett Smith told Kotb.

“No. You know, that’s part of it. I would say that none of that’s true. I definitely can understand why there’d be misunderstandings,” she added, “but none of it’s true.”

The author of Worthy, Pinkett Smith’s autobiography, also made the bombshell revelation that she had been living separately from Smith for the past seven years.

However, they have continued to step out as husband and wife for public appearances.

“We live separately,” Pinkett Smith revealed.

“I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce. We will work through whatever. And I just haven’t been able to break that promise,” she said of the couple’s separation in 2016, when the pair confessed to each other they were “just exhausted with trying” to make it work.

“I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.”

Asked why the couple, who have two children between them, had kept their separation under wraps, Pinkett Smith said she just wasn’t ready to take it public. Plus, they were “still trying to figure out, between the two of us, how to be in partnership”.