Jada Pinkett Smith says she thought husband Will’s Oscars slap was ‘a skit’

Jada Pinkett Smith has finally broken her silence on the moment husband Will Smith walloped Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars and admitted she thought it was “a skit”.

Smith, 55, who was nominated for the best actor prize and went on to win, stormed the stage and slapped the comedian, who was presenting the award for documentary feature and made a joke about his wife’s hair-loss.

Pinkett Smith, 52, who was seated next to Smith in the front row, told People magazine: “I thought, ‘This is a skit’.

“I was like, ‘There’s no way that Will hit him.

“It wasn’t until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realised it wasn’t a skit.”

She added that the first words she uttered to husband once they were alone after the show were “Are you OK?”

Elsewhere in the interview, the Girls Trip actress revealed that she and Smith had actually been separated for six years when the Oscars incident took place.

The marriage between Smith and Pinkett Smith has long been the subject of much speculation and the actress told the magazine: “We’re still figuring it out.”

Pinkett Smith and Smith have been married since 1997 and share two children together - Jaden, 25, and daughter Willow, 22.

Smith also has an older son Trey Smith from his first marriage to actress Sheree Zampino.

Insisting that they have no plans to divorce, she added: “We’ve been doing some really heavy-duty work together.

“We just got deep love for each other and we are going to figure out what that looks like for us.”

Pinkett Smit has previously denied the couple have an open relationship and speculation about the state of their marriage reached fever pitch in 2020, when Pinkett Smith revealed she had had an “entanglement” with singer August Alsina.

Pinkett Smith also addressed her mental health struggles, saying: “When I turned 40, I was in so much pain. I couldn’t figure a way out besides death. So I made a plan.”

She added: “While I was really living the dream, I hit a huge wall — a massive amount of depression.

“I think that I looked at having outside sources to supplement for the voids that I was feeling inside.”

She said the “voices” were incoming. “‘Just kill yourself. You’re not worth anything, you ain’t s***.

“I started looking for places, cliffs where I could have an accident, because I didn’t want my kids to think that their mother had committed suicide.”

She said she found relief in the form of ayahuasca ceremonies, where a leader supplies a plant-based psychedelic drug, usually brewed into a tea to drink, and guides the subject through hallucinations.

She said: “Ayahuasca helped me, it gave me a new intimate relationship with myself that I had never had before”, adding that the first time she took the drug, “the suicidal thoughts completely went away”.