Ahead of the release of her memoir "Worthy," Jada appeared on "Today" to discuss one of her book's most shocking revelations: she and Will have been separated since 2016. The actor said the pair kept their split a secret for so long because they weren't ready to let the public know. "[We were] still trying to figure out, between the two of us, how to be in partnership," she said. "In regards to, how do we present that to people? We hadn't figured that out."
When she was asked what led to their breakup, Jada said that it was "a lot of things." "By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying," she said. "I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be."
Although Will and Jada are separated, the actor said the pair haven't legally gotten a divorce since they promised to "work through whatever." After her "Today" comments made headlines, Jada returned to the show to clarify that she and Will are in the process of fixing their marriage. "Here's the thing about husband-wife marriage for me, for my healing process. I came into that with very specific ideas that were blocks to me seeing Will as who he is," she said. "He can't be this perfect, ideal guy husband. I have to be able to accept him for the human that he is, [and] he accepts me for the human that I am. And we want to love each other there."
On her episode of "Let's Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa," Jada cleared up a few things about her 2020 "Red Table Talk" sit-down with Will, in which they discussed her "entanglement." According to her, they actually came prepared to reveal their separation then, but she realized Will wasn't ready to make it known to the world yet. "He was like, 'I really don't want you to do this alone.' And I think the misconception was that I asked Will to come to the table," she told host Ripa, per a preview of the Oct. 18 episode shared with POPSUGAR. "That just wasn't the case. You can't force Will to do anything, OK?"
She continued, ". . . I think that once he came to the table, what everyone got to see, which was really interesting, and I didn't even know it in present time of how deeply I recognize it now, but the dynamic between us, I started to see him get uncomfortable. I started to see that he was not ready, and my codependency kicked right in. And I was like, I am going to make sure you are good by any means necessary, even if that means taking on the false narrative that I've been the adulterous wife."
Jada added that she "came to that table prepared to let go of a certain persona of myself and a persona of my relationship." ". . . I'm not gonna backstep on me needing this for myself. I want out of this handmade golden cage that I created for myself. And at the same time, how do I help take care of someone who's actually not ready for that
part of the journey?"
"My codependency was like, well, do what you usually do and just take it all on," she continued. ". . . Just take it on the chin. You do it well . . . So that's what I did."
