At first blush, the marriage of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith may seem like the perfect celebrity relationship. Jada Pinkett may have once run with Tupac, but she appears to have made a happy life with the tamer (if more successful) actor-turned rapper Will.
But despite the fact that they’ve been married for over 20 years, the tabloids have rarely been able to latch onto anything scandalous, and the glimpses we have of family life in their household seems idyllic for the most part.
But fans are wont to speculate, and there have certainly been plenty of opportunities for them to read between the lines. And more and more often, fans don’t even need to read between the lines.
Jada’s Red Table Talk provides a forum for surprisingly – and refreshingly – frank discussions that expose Jada’s personal life in a way that’s brutal but relatable. The rumors go way back, so we’ll just start at the beginning and work our way to the present.
The Gay Rumors
Let’s start with the most salacious – but also the most incredulous – of the rumors regarding Will Smith: that he’s secretly gay and both his first marriage and that to Jada are covers to stay in the closet. It seems like every few years there’s another would-be scandal about Will Smith’s secret sexuality, but they mostly fail to gain traction outside of the tabloid rags.
Before her death in 2016, late trans actress Alexis Arquette made the bold accusation that Will Smith was left by his first wife after she found him in bed with another man. According to Arquette’s testimony, his first wife was paid off to cover up the scandal.
She upped the ante further by suggesting that both Will and Jada are gay and serving as beards for one another. As an activist for queer rights, Arquette found their alleged closeting hypocritical. The allegations didn’t seem to go anywhere.
But there were a couple more flashpoints much more recently. In September of 2020, YouTube personality Trisha Paytas accused Smith of sexually assaulting her male dancers, but she walked back the comment to having only heard the accusation secondhand after being confronted.
A few months earlier, Star insinuated that Smith was in an affair with his co-star Duane Campbell. Campbell’s wife publicly denounced the rumor, and Star had little to back their accusations up. And while rumors of Smith’s closeted homosexuality keep coming to light, they’re not the only rumors of infidelity out in the world.
Margot Robbie
Margot Robbie has developed over the course of the last decade from an unknown beauty into one of Hollywood’s most powerful women, but she was still on the come-up when she met Will Smith on the set of Suicide Squad.
The much younger actress admitted that kissing Will for the film was like the taste of a candy cane, and Will himself commented on how beautiful his costar was. The two worked together on Focus in 2015 and Suicide Squad in 2016.
It was that second film where the rumors really took off. While the stories about Jared Leto sending dead rats to his castmates and shooting a video with Rick Ross dominated the headlines, there were more quiet signs that Smith and Robbie were becoming close on the set of their second film.
Considering their on-steam chemistry on Focus, it would make sense. Things really hit a boiling point when pictures taken in a photo booth surfaced showing Smith and Robbie apparently getting cozy with one another. Robbie publicly discounted the implication, claiming that they were just goofing around off-set.
The speculation about an affair between Smith and Robie has simmered on and off since then, generally resurfacing whenever any new and salacious speculation is raised about Jada and Will. The rumor persists today, with some speculating that Will Smith bowed out of a returning role in the Suicide Squad sequel – and an opportunity to star alongside Robbie once more – out of respect for his marriage to Jada.
Liza Koshy
If Margot Robbie seemed like a young match for the 50-something Will Smith, then the rumor of his affair with actress and YouTube personality Liza Koshy is comparatively scandalous.
The 24-year-old certainly isn’t as famous as A-lister Smith, but she’s carved out an impressive niche for herself at her young age. She’s been ranked as one of the most influential people on the internet by multiple publications and earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for her hosting duties on the game show Double Dare.
The first time that Liza was publicly seen with Smith was on his YouTube channel in a video entitled I Shouldn’t Have Challenged Liza Koshy in 2018. Around the same time, she was scheduled to appear in Smith’s film Gemini Man, though she was dropped from the role for unknown reasons.
But internet sleuths think they’ve connected the dots and suspect a relationship between Koshy and Smith. And they see her breakup with fellow YouTuber David Dobrik around the time she started hanging with Will as a sign that it was becoming serious.
The internet rumor mill quickly latched onto the theory. There were rumors that they weren’t just having an affair or dating under the table but instead that Will Smith was acting as her sugar daddy. Will and Liza continue to like and comment on each others’ social media posts with some regularity, but Jada has yet to mention her or the scandal in public.
Whether that’s proof that the rumors are nothing or just an attempt to maintain the dignity of the marriage is an open question.
Jada’s Own Sex Scandal
If there’s one thing that Jada and Will are good at, it’s keeping their business secret. While Jada is open and honest on her Red Table Talk, she’s ultimately the one who decides what to reveal. So it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that it took her four years to talk about her own affair. And the situation is complicated.
In 2016, while Jada and Will were dealing with one of the rougher patches in their marriage, she admitted to having an affair with rapper August Alsina. Smith himself was a rapper, but Alsina was more in line with one of Jada’s older flames: Tupac Shakur. By Jada’s telling, she began simply by wanting to help August, but romantic tension flared over the course of their friendship. But she also claims that it happened while the two were separated and thus she didn’t have to ask Smith for permission.
Whatever happened, and however it ended, it seems like Jada and Will are better than they’ve ever been.
They deny rumors that they’re in an open relationship and seem dedicated to making things work both for themselves and their kids. But it does leave one guessing. If Will and Jada were separated in 2016, could Will’s alleged affairs with younger women have fallen during that same period of time?
Chances are that we won’t know for sure until the two decide to reveal it. Regardless of whatever struggles they’ve been through, they seem dedicated to making their lives together beautiful. And their unique ability to keep their private lives private even as celebrities around them are surrounded by one scandal after another is a talent worth making the most of.
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