Jada Pinkett Smith directly discussed singer August Alsina’s bombshell claim that he was romantically linked to her in the past and that her husband, Will Smith, gave him his blessing, on an emotional episode of her Facebook Watch series, Red Table Talk.
During the episode on Friday, Jada and Will sat down with one another, and Jada acknowledged she had a past relationship with August that took place years ago. Jada said she was involved with August when she and Will were separated.
“We were over,” she says of her and Will’s relationship at the time.
Jada said that during that time she got into an “entanglement” with August, and when Will pressed her, she acknowledged that it was a “relationship.”
“Yes, it was a relationship, absolutely,” she says.
However, she pushed back against the notion that Will gave August “permission.”
“The only person who could give permission is myself,” she pointed out.
“I just wanted to feel good, it had been so long since I felt good,” she continued about her relationship with August. “And it was a joy to help heal someone. I think that has a lot to do with my co-dependency.”
However, she did not find the type of fulfillment she was looking for.
“I definitely realized you can’t find happiness outside yourself,” she said.
Jada and Will stressed that there has never been secrets in their marriage, and Jada said she didn’t consider what she did a “transgression,” noting that she learned so much from it. She said August had chosen to cut off communication with her, which she completely understood, and she was surprised when his comments came out.
As for she and Will, they said they continue to have “unconditional love” for one another.
“We ride together, we die together,” they said at the same time with a smile.
Prior to the episode, 48-year-old Jada teased that there would be “healing” happening at her now famous red table after 27-year-old August’s headline-making comments to radio personality Angela Yee while discussing his new album, The Product III: stateofEMERGEncy. August — who himself has appeared on a past episode of Red Table Talk as a close friend of Jada’s — claimed that he’d lost “money, friendships [and] relationships” over rumors of his relationship with Jada, but said that he had “never” done anything wrong. Rumors that he and Jada were romantically linked have circulated for some time, with many fans believing that his 2019 song, “Nunya,” was written about the actress.
“People can have whatever ideas that they like, but what I’m not OK with is my character being in question,” August said. “I’m not a troublemaker. I don’t like drama. Drama actually makes me nauseous. I also don’t think that it’s ever important for people to know what I do, who I sleep with, who I date, right? But, in this instance, it’s very different, ’cause as I said, there is so many people that are side-eyeing me, looking at me questionable about it.”
“I actually sat down with Will and had a conversation,” August continued to claim. “Due to the transformation from their marriage to [a] life partnership that they have spoken on several times, and not involving romanticism, he gave me his blessing.”
August was clearly emotional as he spoke about Jada.
“I truly and really, really deeply loved, and have a ton of love for her,” he said. “I devoted myself to it, I gave my full self to it. So much so to the point that I can die right now and be OK with knowing that I truly gave myself to somebody. I really loved the person that I experienced that [with] and know what [that feels] like.”
“I love these people. I really, genuinely do,” he added, seemingly speaking about the entire Smith family. “I’ve never been in love in that kind of a way. So much so that being intertwined in that way — walking away from it butchered me. I’m shakin’ right now because it almost killed me. Not almost; It did. It pushed me into being another person, my newer self. It. Broke. Me. Down.”
In a later Instagram post, August said he stood by his “truth.”
“Truth & Transparency makes us uncomfortable, yes, but I can’t apologize for that,” he wrote in part. “A tower of truth can never fall, only a tower of lies can do that. My truth is MY truth, & its mine to own. There is no right or wrong here, it simply just IS. & I make room and have acceptance for your thoughts and opinions, regardless if I agree or not, you have that freedom to feel WHATEVER it is u feel because when you’re at TRUE peace, all of the noise and chatter becomes that of a whisper.”
And although August didn’t name names, he claimed that the appropriate people were contacted before his interview with Yee.
“My heart has no malice or hate toward anyone on this planet,” he wrote. “I just simply want the chains off & I’m willing to DIE getting there. … W/ that being said i should also say that, no one was side swiped by any conversation, everyone got courtesy calls time in advance. Wishing Everyone Big Love!”
On Sunday, Jada’s mom, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, appeared to weigh in on the situation with her own cryptic Instagram message.
“Get rid of the pedestal you put people on,” she wrote. “Recognize that people are only people with flaws and imperfections just like you and me. Do that and you’ll be much happier, cause guess what??? They already are! Sleep well, beloveds! #keepitpushin’.”
Meanwhile, Jada and 51-year-old Will have talked openly in the past about letting go of a certain image of their marriage, and about referring to themselves as life partners as opposed to being married. Jada has also publicly denied that she and Will are “swingers.”
Will said of him and Jada in a July 2018 interview on TIDAL’s Rap Radar podcast, “We don’t even say we’re married anymore. We refer to ourselves as life partners, where you get into that space where you realize you are literally with somebody for the rest of your life. There’s no deal breakers. There’s nothing she could do — ever. Nothing that would break our relationship. She has my support till death and it feels so good to get to that space.”
Meanwhile, Jada said about their union in an October 2018 episode of Red Table Talk, “It’s a life partnership, in the sense that we’ve created a foundation together that we know is for this lifetime. … It gives us the freedom to create a different context for ourselves to not have to live up to the expectation of what people consider marriage to be.”
When 360aproko later spoke with Jada about the candid episode, she opened up about a difficult period she and Will had a decade ago in their marriage, and said she felt “constricted.”
“I just felt like, I needed more freedom,” she said of their troubles. “And freedom in the sense of like … the public wants you to be a certain way, your family needs you in a certain way, your partner needs you to be something. And for me, that just was never … I’m really a free spirit at heart, I really am. And I always have been. And I just felt like my life had got constricted into this little box and it was strangling me, basically.”
“People very rarely talk about the courage it takes to be happy — how much bravery it takes to be happy,” she continued. “And really, that’s what I needed to gain, was the courage and the bravery to do what Jada needed to do, to be happy, you know? And that was to dissolve everything that was and create something completely different.”
