Since Will Smith's Oscar slap controversy, his marriage to Jada Pinkett Smith has been a hot topic in the media. People have been questioning their "open relationship" — with fans uncovering some red flags in their public interactions. Others have also started to criticize their parenting style and their past relationships, including the actress' rumored fling with Wesley Snipes. Here's the truth about their relationship.
Did Jada Pinkett Smith Date Wesley Snipes?
Not much is known about Pinkett Smith's relationships before her current husband. Sure, there's her complicated relationship with Tupac Shakur (we'll discuss that later). Other than that, her dating history is somewhat a mystery. But according to ETOnline, the Matrix star briefly dated Snipes in the early '90s. They even made a public appearance together at the 21st Annual AFI Lifetime Achievement Awards in 1993. Nothing's written about their short romance, but there are photos of them together at the event and in a car during Woody Harelson's Furthest From the Sun play opening at Tiffany Theatre in West Hollywood.
At the time, Snipes was already an established movie star who has appeared in films like Vietnam War Story, Major League, Jungle Fever, and New Jack City. Pinkett Smith, on the other hand, was still a Hollywood newcomer. She's also 10 years younger than him, so she hadn't really made her mark back then. In 1990, she'd only made an appearance in an episode of True Colors and Life with Fathers. It wasn't until 1993 that she had her breakout TV guest role in Doogie Howser, M.D.
That same year, she also made her film debut in Menace II Society. Shakur himself recommended her for the part of Ronnie, a single mother. She wanted to quit the movie after the rapper's exit, but he convinced her to stay. Since then, Pinkett Smith went on to score several roles in bigger-budget films like A Low Down Dirty Shame where her performance was described by The New York Times "as sassy and sizzling as a Salt-N-Pepa recording, walks away with the movie." She became more popular after playing Eddie Murphy's love interest in the 1996 remake of The Nutty Professor.
Jada Pinkett Smith Also Dated Grant Hill
In 2020, Pinkett Smith admitted on Red Table Talk that she once dated former NBA player, Grant Hill. "He was the first boyfriend I brought home for the holidays," she shared. Hill is currently married to singer, Tamia. The two were set up by Anita Baker in 1996. She asked Tamia at the Soul Train Music Awards if she was seeing anyone and when she said no, Baker said that she had someone for her. Since the Officially Missing You singer lived in Canada at the time, she didn't meet Hill until seven months during a talent show in Los Angeles. He said it was love at first sight.
The two dated for three years before tying the knot in Detroit in 1999. They welcomed their first daughter, Myla Grace in 2002 followed by Lael Rose five years later. In December 2020, as they celebrated their 20th anniversary, Tamia said that "there's no secret" to their happy marriage because they simply work on it. "We were just talking about how people were asking just these deep questions, and we were like, at the end of the day, it’s not deep," she said of their marriage during an interview with Essence.
"Marriage is not deep. It isn't complicated, you're just trying to make it," she continued, adding that words of affirmation help as well. "Every day you are just saying to each other, 'we are going to work it out, we are going get through it together,' [because] it's not about looking into each other’s eyes, it's about looking in the same direction. So, there's no secret."
What Happened Between Jada Pinkett Smith & Tupac Shakur?
Pinkett Smith and 2Pac "were never intimate," at least according to her husband, Smith. However, he admitted that their love for each other was "legendary" that he used to be "tortured" by it. "Though they were never intimate, their love for each other is legendary – they defined 'ride or die,'" he wrote in his memoir, Will. "In the beginning of our relationship, my mind was tortured by their connection. He was PAC! and I was me."
He added: "He triggered the perception of myself as a coward. I hated that I wasn’t what he was in the world, and I suffered a raging jealousy: I wanted Jada to look at me like that." Though the rapper referred to Pinkett Smith as his "heart in human form" in a poem, the actress said that they decided to be friends after a "disgusting" kiss. "There was a time when I was like, 'Just kiss me! Let's just see how this goes,'" she told Howard Stern in 2015. "And when I tell you it had to be the most disgusting kiss for us both."