Jada Pinkett Smith: Being 'Doting Wife' to Will Didn’t Make Me Happy
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith have one of the more enduring unions in Hollywood. The pair met in 1994 on the set of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, when the now-52-year-old auditioned for the role of Smith's character's girlfriend. And although the role eventually went to actress Nia Long, the pair began dating soon after. They later married on December 31, 1997, when Pinkett Smith was three months pregnant with the couple's first child, Jaden Smith.
Yet, despite this auspicious start to what should have been a fairytale marriage, being wed to an A-list actor has not always been easy. In an excerpt of her new book Worthy, published by People, Pinkett Smith recalled a time when her struggles with severe depression made her question the life she shared with Smith and their children.
"For two decades, I had been putting on a good face, going with the flow, telling everyone I was okay," the Red Table Talk host writes. "Yet underneath, bouts of depression and overwhelming hopelessness had smoldered until they turned into raging hellfire in my broken heart. Unwelcome feelings—of not deserving love—made it harder to understand the disconnect between the so-called perfect life I had achieved and the well of loss I carried with me. Therapy helped up to a point. It got me to forty! But to what end?"
Pinkett Smith explains that she was later diagnosed with complex trauma with PTSD and dissociation. But before that, she says that waking up every morning "was like walking the plank of doom." And while her children had always been her motivation to keep on going, she got to the point that even that was a struggle.
"I followed the rules... the rules we’re told to follow," she continues. "You work hard, make sacrifices for those you love. The rules tell you: Be a doting mother and a doting wife, do the work required, and life turns into paradise. NOPE. A loving relationship, harmony, peace... that happiness had yet to be delivered."
"On paper, it all looked grand—I had the beautiful family, the superstar husband, the lavish lifestyle, fame and fortune," Pinkett Smith laments. "I had my own career, the freedom and support to pursue creative outlets. The sweetest part was my kids—Jaden, Willow, and my bonus son, Trey—my three favorite people in the world. They were, hands down, the best thing that ever happened to me. Yet none of that prevented me from hitting the wall I was speeding toward at a hundred miles per hour, knowing full well—this shit's gonna blow!"
Pinkett Smith says that she sought help in the forms of everything from silent yoga retreats and backpacking alone to "studying every religion you can think of," but ultimately, none of it helped. And to make matters worse, cracks in the couple's marriage were starting to show, and that she "couldn't make it right no matter how hard I tried."
"And so, by Thanksgiving, I’d fallen into despair and wanted to be on this earth less and less," she adds. "This was not living."
Although there is no cure-all for depression, Pinkett Smith's journey to "reclamation" only began after hitting this mental health rock bottom, as the couple prepares to celebrate their 26th wedding anniversary later this year.
The pair's relationship, including their experimentation with an open marriage, has been the subject of constant headlines over the past few years.
Worthy hits shelves on Oct. 17.