With time, Pinkett Smith got over her aversion to their marriage and decided that tying the knot was, in fact, “the right call.”
Editor's note: This article was originally published on April 11, 2022. It has since been updated.
Amid the controversy surrounding Will Smith's infamous slap at the Oscars, a freshly exhumed snippet from her Red Table Talk Facebook series reveals that Pinkett Smith never wanted to get married to Will Smith. In fact, the Matrix actress admitted to “crying down the freaking aisle” before tying the knot with the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star on New Year’s Eve in 1997, according to New York Post. “I was under so much pressure, you know, being a young actress, being young, and I was just, like, pregnant and I just didn’t know what to do,” declared Pinkett Smith, 51. “I never wanted to be married.” In the clip from 2018, Pinkett Smith candidly recalled how her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, also known as “Gammy,” 69, forced her and Smith to get married after she became pregnant with their first son together, Jaden, now 24.
“I really didn’t wanna get married,” Pinkett Smith restated at the circular table, in the presence of her mom, as well as Smith, 54, and their daughter Willow, 22. “We only got married because Gammy was crying,” a chuckling Smith informed Willow. “It was almost as if Gammy was like, ‘You have to get married, so let’s talk about the wedding,’” said Pinkett Smith, prompting Banfield-Norris to confess, “I remember feeling very strongly and wanting you guys to be married.”
Gammy herself was just 18 when she became pregnant with Pinkett Smith, and briefly married her father, Robsol Pinkett Jr. “I do remember [wanting you and Will to get married] but I don’t remember your rejection of the idea of marriage,” Banfield-Norris added. “I remember the rejection of the idea of a wedding but not of a marriage.” Then, Pinkett Smith recalled being browbeaten into getting hitched. “And now Gammy done gone to Will, crying about ‘I don’t want a wedding,’ and now I’m being forced to have a wedding,” she said. “I just wanted it to be the two of us on a mountain because I was like: ‘This is serious business.’”
The couple got married at the Gothic-style Cloisters Castle in a suburb of her hometown, Baltimore, Maryland. While the entire event was picturesque, the actual wedding was far from it, agreed Pinkett Smith and her mom. “The wedding was horrible,” Banfield-Norris conceded. “It was a mess. Jada was sick, she was very unpleasant … She didn’t cooperate with anything.” Laughing, Pinkett Smith agreed, saying, “And I was so upset that I had to have a wedding. I was so pissed I went crying down the freaking aisle. I cried the whole way down the aisle.”
However, Smith's emotions towards the wedding were the exact opposite, he shared. In fact, he was positively giddy on their wedding day. “There wasn’t a day in my life that I wanted anything other than being married and having a family,” he said during the episode. “From literally 5 years old, I was picturing what my family would be.”
But with time, Pinkett Smith got over her aversion to their marriage and decided that tying the knot was, in fact, “the right call.”
References:
https://www.facebook.com/redtabletalk/videos/2174148442809253/
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Rich Polk
