Becoming Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Part 1)

at you. And we're starting with the one and only Will Smith. I'm about to go to the Red table. You know what I'm saying. I feel like a fighter going to a fight. So I've read somebody screamed you the best chance, somebody screams thank you, thank you. I just hope that daddy's are making jokes the whole time. I said that too. Well, it should be interesting. And I mean, this is the first time we're actually talking about our unique union. I've been watching all your talks.

People climb any breaking down. You're not breaking me to day, Jada. I've broken you enough well. And I said our vows almost twenty one years ago, and it's been an incredible journey ever since. But we struggled through a lot of pain to get where we are today. Here's the real story of becoming Mr and Mrs Smith. Oh my goodness, look who we have table, Yes, we got Willard Gerald Smith. Yes, excited to be here on the red table with you ladies. You know I've been away for a while. I've been

at work. I was very surprised that the house wasn't a house no more. It's read just one part of it. Though. You look spectacular today. Thank you, Willard, Thank you so very happy to be here, very happy to have you here. Will What are we going to talk about today of and relating? We're gonna say a whole lot of stuff about our relationship. For years and years, there's been a lot of speculation about us, and our family has been

pretty secretive and state. They think, oh, something weird must be going in when it's really just we don't be putting everything out there like that. We have created a marital and family paradigm that has been speculated about for a lot of years. So I'm excited to start what

they want. Let's start with the first time I met you was at the Fresh Prince when I came to audition I think I was nineteen and they told me I was too short, but you were there, yes, So I remember you were in Different World and Alfonso knew everybody, and I remember the first time I saw you. Actually think I dated Alfonso. You went on a date with fons I together and he took you on a motorcycle

or something. My memory is I dated at Yeah, I'm sure, yeah, but we went on one day, so Alfonso knew you. I was like, yo, dude, I saw this girl on Different World last night. I was like, her name is Jada, Dude? He said, oh yeah, yeah, my boy knows that he can't introduce you. I have a thing I recognize when I see a person if our relationship can be exponential. The first night with Jazzy Jeff with fifteen minutes, I was like, yo, me and that dude can create right.

I could just I just feel it and I know it when somebody is right for me. First night on that our findso like we were playing. I was like, me and that dude our magic. When I saw you on Different World, it was that thing and I don't know what it is that the bell rings and I knew that there was something in our energy that would be magic, and so I was like, I'll hook it up. Uh. Fresh Prince taped on Friday nights and Different World taped

on Thursday Thursday, so it was the night before. So Alf was like, yo, I can, I can set the meeting up. So we went, you know, and it was first season. I was Fresh Prince. So I walked up in the audience a Different World. I was the fresh Prince, you know. So it was you know, I walked in, I sat down in the audience and they the taping started, and then Alf was like, yo, that's my boy, that knows When he sat down and I was like, yo,

who's that girl he's with? It was like the dude that was gonna introduce me was with another girl, and I was like, who is that girl? And it was Shari. He went to Different World to meet Jada and that Sharie and ended up marrying Shari and having with you didn't know. I don't think I've heard that before. I didn't meet Jada. That day. We had a party at our house. I mean, Sharia had a party at the house or something. I can't remember. Joka some some two

bit Joka whatever. We had all of these near misses, and every time we saw each other it was always a beautiful energy. The real time was probably I think Dwayne and T Shirt had a thing at the Baked Potato and we sat down at the Baked Potato and we talked. There was a really unique, beautiful power. Yeah, we just we had that moment and we connected. But I was married, and it was, you know, we just that was it. We did not having having at all.

It was just that next night, me and Sharie went to dinner and I sat down with Shari and it was one of the most bizarre emotions I ever had. After we had that talk and we were at the Palm, and I remember I had to get up from dinner when I had a realization that I wasn't with the person I was supposed to be with. But you would have stayed with her forever, forever, I would have never gotten divorced. I went in the bathroom at the Palm

and I broke down in tears. And I was sitting in a stall in the restaurant and I was crying uncontrollably and then laughing, like what the heck is wrong with me? And I was crying and laughing, and it's like I knew that was the woman I was supposed to be with, but I was never getting divorced. I don't get divorced. All the emotions at one time that you figured it out, figured it out, but devastated emotionally. And then I had never come to fish. It never

was never gonna happen. I just had to get my gangster back together, and I got myself together, went back out and set down with she read and went started going back on with my life. And then she divorced you, and then she read she filed for divorce. She hit me hard. She refiled for divorce on Valentine's There, I was like out out and I still told her, I say no, you can't have a divorce, and she hit me with the so you're gonna make somebody stay with

you who doesn't love you? And I was like, all right, were not? No, I'm not, And I was like that was the one that got me. And I remember I was like, I'm gon signing divorce papers. I walked out of there and I was in the car and I had Jada's number. I literally walked right out from there. I called Jada because you had moved back to Baltimore, bought a house in Baltimore. She was not going to live in Hollywood. She had left the business and bought

a farm in Baltimore. That's amazing about a farm. I said, hey, Jada was up as well. She said, hey, how you doing. I said good. I said, are you seeing anybody? Oh my god, and she said, uh no. I said, cool, you're seeing me now, And my dumb mass was like, okay. She got on a plane, came back to l A. Never never spent one night in her farm in Baltimore, never spent one night in the house. Actually kind of sad. I always know how much you wanted to have that

kind of life. You know, it's okay because I got you. But it's just like everything happens for a reason, exactly. And then we started dating, and then I got pregnant two years in. I knew the moment after the act that I was pregnant the moment, but I knew that night and he didn't believe me, but I knew. And it was almost like you know those big locks on the bank, that those big turning locks. I could feel that in my womb and my uterus. It was like It was literally for seconds after we had sex and

she goes, I said, baby, okay, she's like pregnant. I was like, it was like, babe, I think scientifically you got pregnant. Scientifically you're not pregnant yet. I cried that whole night. She cried all night. I was like, my life is never going to be the same. I funny, we want to they were funny. I was like, what

am I gonna do now? I really didn't want to get married, but we only got married because Gammy was crying, well Gammy when it was almost as if Gammy was like, you have to get married, so let's talk about the wedding. It was almost like that. And she completely just was like, that's not a reality where you're just so much pressure, you know, being a young actress, being young, and I was just pregnant. I just I was just like, I didn't know what to do, but I just knew. I

was like, I never wanted to be married. I don't remember that. I remember feeling very strongly and wanting you guys to be married. I do remember that, but I don't remember your rejection of the idea of marriage. I remember the rejection of the idea of a wedding. I didn't want to. I was like, I don't want to get married, and now gave me. Then gone to Will crying about I don't want to have a wedding and now I'm being forced to have a wedding when really I just wanted it to be the two of us

on a mountain, because I was like, this is serious business. Yeah, I'm sorry that I didn't respect your wishes. I was totally a selfish I never had that experience of my daughter getting married because you were my only child. But that was so selfish. It's okay, I mean it was right for you to marry, but not necessarily that to have a wedding. Because the wedding was horrible. It was a mess, Jade. It was sick. She was very unpleasant

when she was sick. She didn't cooperate with anything. Yeah, so she was having my first Oh it was horrible, and I was so upset that I had to have a wedding. I was so pissed. I'm crying down the freaking getting married. Cried the whole way because there was one question I forgot to ask. She said that she

never wanted to get married. Did you. There wasn't a day in my life that I wanted anything other than being married and having a family, like the literally five years old, I was picturing what my family would be. What was the fundamental bump about the idea of marriage in general that you were against. I just never really agreed with the constructs. I just don't agree with it. I never have. I still don't till death do us part. It's real for me, it's just all of the rules.

And as a wife, you know, yeah, exactly right, because of this title wife is the conventional definition of wife in the paradigm. I'm not that. I don't know if I've ever said this, you know how, I'm a scientist, so everything is science for me. I read something when we first got together that the most successful men in history have been married, right, and for me, I knew that I would squander my life if I was running around the way my mind works, I can only excel

for a woman like I can't like that though. I think that I think women are are true motivators for men. And the one thing that I think has has been the greatest motivator and asset for me with you is your absolute refusal to accept anything from me other than the best that I could possibly be, and vice versa. Yeah, I remember me and Mommy talk for hours in the morning. There's something about that first thing in the morning that we we literally can talk for two and a half

three hours. But you can do that anytime in the day. Let me just tell you, because that was one of the things that I admired so much about your relationship, and I recognized that I didn't have it in mind. It's so important. There was a moment that launched our communication before we got married. We were having the party at the house. Remember that we were playing pictionary, new people around the table and Tray is sitting on my lap. He's like one, and he's like, team might be just

about two in some order. She cursed at me in front of twenty people at this party. She's like, well, would you shut the up with Trey sitting on my lap? Right? And I grabbed the newspaper and I said, and I talked to you in another room place and I was like, this joker just hit me on my head with a newspaper. Dog. We went in the other room and I was like, I said, Jada, this is the deal. I grew up in a household where I watched my father punch my

mother in the face. And I will not create a house space and interaction with a person where there's profanity and violence. If you have to talk to me like that, we can't be together. We're not going to use any profanity in our interactions. We're not going to raise our voice, We're not going to be violent. I can't do it. She was like, you're not gonna be hit me my head.

I said, get out, and she was looking that was the dumbest crap she had ever heard, and she was like, wait, so you would break up with me over some words. I was like, yeah, I just did it. I was like, we're not cursing, and her eyes welled up with tears and she was like, okay. It was twenty years before we used profanity in any conversation that we had. We didn't use any profanity and any never raised our voices. We took communication courses all of that, and never had

a violent never voices. We couldn't afford to. We just couldn't because it could get ugly. We wouldn't have been able to nurture kindness love. What do you do with our feelings. With the emotion that comes when you're angry, you really have to discipline yourself. Like for me, I had to discipline myself and really handle that within myself to say, Okay, what are you angry about? And then come to peace and then go and talk to Will when I can actually have a communication, because really you're

not communicating when you're talking to anger. Yeah, what I realized is like you're beating up on someone you say

you love, right versus handle that with yourself. There's been plenty of times we have to go, I can't do this right through your thoughts and gos, go cry, go curse, go kick a tree, deal back in the situation when you're calm and peasable, because then you just create more problems mad about how you got to the argument, what happened, what you said, what you did, because you can never put it back. And that was one of the things we learned really early. Apologize a thousand times. You never

get it back and you get addicted to it. Also, Yeah, and not that you get addicted, like like if you keep on doing it once you call somebody a couple of times, it's real easy. It's easy to telling you, we will were not the ones. We were not the ones. We would get hurt all kinds of stuff. It would have gone bad, and we both instinctually we knew that it could go wrong. I pre planned the things that I would say when I was in that place, so I had stock things. I would say, Um, I'm impaired.

I can't I can't be loving right now, I can't be kind right now, So you have to let me go and when I come back, I will come back in a way that is the way you deserve me to deliver myself to you. Or he would just be like, I'm a lead before I knock your head off. You know what I think is really strong. And the thing with the two of us that never got out is the intention. We were always in sync on a couple

of really powerful ideas. We were always building a family. Always, we were always that was our number one priority with family that until this day, no matter what, family, no matter what, so everything else that might have gone awry or crazy, we had cross intentions sometimes that that made us collide right. That was one of the major difficulties that we had because externally every was beautiful. As a couple, we are magical. We win in the material world, and

we do it together. We win right, the Karate Kid with my Hair Hawthorne and the Nobel Peace Prize. Our family did that within a six month period. Right. I was like, I'm parenting to hell out these kids, like we are killing this show on Hawthorne. The only interview that Barack Obama did when he won the Nobel Peace Prize was me and Mommy. Right externally, our family was winning. Right, And there was a period where Mommy woke up and cried forty five days straight. I started keeping a diary,

Damn you miss some days. It was every morning. I think that's the worst I've ever in our marriage. I was failing miserably, but on the outside, I was winning. Like I built the house and called the house her lake, right, And during that time is I remember saying like, I built this house for you. I called it her lake, and she said, you built this house for you? And

I was like, what did you talk about, Jada. But it was devastating for me to accept that I built the house for me, because in my mind I was saying I was building it for her, but I wasn't. I wanted this house I called it her lake as an ego cover, right, and Jada was calling me on that. Right. What I realized is I was building a pick. Sure. I grew up in a household where I was scared and watched my father beat my mother up, right, So I was going to build the complete opposite of that.

It's gonna be wonderland. Everybody's going to be happy all the time. Come on, well, let's play. I was saying, no, all the way, the house is too big, will not this will? And he had a picture at a picture, and I had a public person had public that wanted to projectives of our relationship of the family and what my kids are and what my wife is and what we are in the world. Didn't you ever feel like Jada was ungrateful? Hey, yeah, look at everything that I've

done for you. Yes, that was another crateful. But that was the other thing, because there were times I felt ungrateful because I was like, look at your life, How could you be so unhappy? I used to think I was crazy, and I think that's actually how how I felt when I first got wind of your discontent. It wasn't that I thought that you were ungrateful. I just didn't understand, like, what's wrong? What what? What's what could possibly be wrong? But that's why I couldn't talk to it.

And that's what. But Jada is an actress, but she had two babies and she had to be home to raise her babies while I got to do everything I wanted to do. She was sacrificing herself to fit my picture. But my life was it really disrupted in the least, right, And I think that was the if there were an individual. Most poisonous aspect of our relationship in the past is I felt that money and winning made a good relationship. We're succeeding in the world. That means our relationship is good.

And I would say to him, I would go, will throw away everything that's happening in the outside world, your career, everything, and it's just me and you on a on an island. The way do we have? And I was like, we have an island. We own the island, you know, And it was like I so didn't comprehend that. So me

and you on an island, what do we have? Not only did I not understand, I didn't care, right, I was unaware of what it meant to truly connect with somebody I've been trying to live up to an expectation full well, you know, you were trapped in a life that you didn't build, didn't want, and that I didn't want, but that I had to come to the understanding that I allowed myself to have. You accepted all of that

because of your fear, absolutely, and that's the truth. And fear. Fear, just fear of not wanting to rock the boat I had kids, you know, and just whatnot, you know, because he's a force to be reckoned with just a lot of stuff you let slide and go past that angers you and you get resentment, you know, but you don't change it because you're scared. At the end of the day, it's about fear. And that was around the time when Willow want, oh, I was so mad at you this

day when you put your hand on my face. Oh yeah, And Willow, me and Jade are going through it and Willow was like, oh, Daddy, it's so sad. She's putting her hand on my face. She was like nine, and Jada was in the kitchen and she's like, Mommy, isn't it sad? Jada suit what he said. Daddy has a picture of a family in his mind and it's not us. Know. The thing is, it was such a deep truth, but I was just saying obvious out of me, isn't it. Yeah? And I think for me, the turning point in our

relationship for me happened when I turned forty. Yeah, I just couldn't as as like, I just I can't. I can't do this like this anymore. Next time at the Red Table we broke up, will and I really break it down. I was devastated, even worse than a divorce, and get ready for the next few weeks of red hot table talk. That's real talk. I hated being divorced. I hated everything about it. I felt because I was sick.

He left, he started hitting me and he was in a rage, and I went through the bedroom and right across the street to neighbor. I was hurt, but Jada I wasn't even considering. I know that she would be hurt. H If I celebrate anything black, I inevitably get a million comments. Where are they coming from? People? Hey, red Table Talk family. Head to our Red Table Talk Facebook watch show page. Follow the Red Table Talk show page for new episodes and updates. Join the conversation and become

a part of red table Talk. Brought out to join the red table Talk family and become a part of the conversation. Follow us at Facebook dot com slash red table talk. Thanks for listening to this episode of Red Table Talk podcast produced by Facebook Watch, Westbrook Audio, and I Heart Radio.