Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith came together for a Red Table Talk on Friday (July 10), but the table was turned when he interviewed his wife about recent relationship rumors with singer August Alsina.
She cleared the air and described her previous relationship with the 27-year-old artist as an “entanglement.” Billboard compiled a timeline that unwinds what happened between the three of them.
April 10, 2019 – Alsina denies his remix of Kehlani‘s “Nunya” has lyrics about Pinkett Smith.
When the relationship rumors between the two sprung up last spring, he seemed to fuel the fire by dropping a remix of Kehlani’s “Nunya” track with Dom Kennedy from her 2019 EP While We Wait. The official video features his Animoji singing the lyrics while he’s texting someone named Koren, which is the actress’s middle name. He also drops a GIF of Jada in the conversation right when he croons, “You got me feeling like it was an act, you’re just an actress/ Putting on a show ‘cause you don’t want the world to know/ That you lost a man who loved you all along/ Baby, couldn’t we just let this go?”
In a since-deleted Instagram post, he denied the song had anything to do with the 48-year-old star. “So Here’s To Clarity, The Song is not about Jada. It’s simply JUST A SONG , & a free artistic expression of a made up narrative already put in place by its ORIGINAL format,” he wrote at the time. “Thankyou for all of your love around the music & more is to come but please know that Me & my BEST (@jadapinkettsmith )are good!!! & We will always be, 4Life! We’ve been talking eryday while all this has taken place. Now yal stop trippin’. lol ..U know We got BiG LoVe for the Goddess over on this side.”
[embedded content]
June 30, 2020 – Alsina talks about his past relationship with Jada in an interview with Angela Yee.
While promoting his third album The Product III: State of Emergency, Alsina sat down with The Breakfast Club radio host Yee not to put the rumors to bed, but to bring them back up. He claimed the Smiths, whom he considers to be “like my family,” had an open marriage and the Bad Boys actor allegedly gave the singer permission to date Jada.
“I actually sat down with Will and had a conversation…. He gave me his blessing,” he told Yee in their hour-long conversation. “And I totally gave myself to that relationship for years of my life, and I truly and really, really, deeply loved and have a ton of love for her. I devoted myself to it. I gave my full self to it. So much so that I can die right now, and be ok with knowing that I fully gave myself to somebody…. And some people never get that in this lifetime.”
[embedded content]
July 10, 2020 – Pinkett Smith brings herself to the Table to talk about her past relationship with Alsina.
On the most recent episode of her Facebook Watch series Red Table Talk, the Girls Trip actress decided to purge the falsified media narrative about her rumored affair for the sake of healing on both sides. “About four years ago, [I] started a friendship with August. And we actually became really, really good friends. And it all started with him just needing some help,” the talk show host told Will, addressing the singer’s health at the time. Back in 2018, Alsina appeared on the Red Table Talk as a guest where he discussed suffering from an autoimmune disease that attacks his liver and his past addiction to Percocet.
When discussing her and Smith’s temporary separation from their marriage, she debunked the myth about Smith granting Alsina permission to have a relationship with her before calling what the two had by another name. “I got into an entanglement with August,” she declared. “I was in a lot of pain, and I was very broken. In the process of that relationship, I definitely realized that you can’t find happiness outside of yourself.”
July 10, 2020 – Alsina responds to Pinkett Smith’s claims about their past relationship.
Shortly after the Red Table Talk episode aired, the “No Love” singer decided to chime into the trending conversation. “Imagine not knowing how to mind the business that pay you. I catch all the subliminals. (Not just about today) & you can call me whatever you like, Mess is constantly inserting yourself in topics you have nun to do w/. Go play w/ ya MAMMY! Not me!” he wrote on Twitter. “If you have something to say, say it w/ ya CHEST kids. It’s always very perplexing cause I real deal be showing people genuine love. Whole time that envy eating ya lil heart. Anyway, NEXT!!”
July 11, 2020 – 50 Cent puts his two cents into the debacle by sliding into Smith’s DMs.
Leave it 50 Cent to get his own answers. The mega rapper and producer decided to check in with Smith personally after the Red Table Talk episode and posted a screenshot of their PG-13 Instagram direct message conversation where the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air actor ended up cussing him out. “Da– it’s like that, what i do ?” 50 Cent wrote for the caption, prompting Nelly, 2 Chainz and Lil’ Mo to pat him on the back for winning the “BEST COVO OF 2020 AWARD,” according to the “Hot in Herre” artist.
The “In Da Club” superstar later shared a meme of Smith from a popular, heartbreaking Fresh Prince of Bel-Air scene when Will breaks down in front of Uncle Phil about his absentee father, but someone dubbed his original speech to talk about Pinkett Smith and Alsina’s relationship. “Ain’t like I’mma be sitting up every night asking my wife, ‘When’s August coming over, you know? Who needs him?'” he said per the revised script, which captures Smith’s character now breaking down about his wife in real life having a relationship with the younger singer during their separation.
July 14, 2020 – Charlamagne tha God is Team Will Smith.
The Breakfast Club co-host made his opinion on the situation quite clear during the July 14 episode. “Jada Pinkett Smith was dead-ass wrong,” the co-host said of how the actress responded when Alsina reportedly approached her while he was struggling. “That young man came to her broken, in need of healing and her response is, ‘I wanted to feel good … I hadn’t felt good in a long time?’ So ya slept with him? Never mind how this young man is feeling, you just gotta get yours? That is the epitome of toxic behavior.”
Charlamagne also wasn’t impressed that Pinkett Smith offered advice on her show Red Table Talk, saying that the star “clearly hadn’t done the work on herself.”
July 17 – Alsina sticks by his “exact truth.”
The singer revisited his romance with the actress in an interview on Lil Wayne’s Young Money Radio. During their chat, Alsina told Weezy that he’ll always have feelings for Pinkett Smith: “I will always have love for her as a person. The experience really did help to transform me and really bring out the king in me.”
Alsina also stuck by his claim that Smith had given him permission to date the actor’s wife. “As two men, we had a conversation and that’s what it was,” he explained of the chat he had with the actor. “Everything that I’ve spoken on in my initial interview is and was, and still is, my exact truth.”
July 18, 2020 – Alsina offers his take in new song “Entanglements.”
The crooner took some shots at former flame Pinkett Smith in his new song with Rick Ross, including right in the title. (The actress had referred to her relationship with the singer as an “entanglement” during her Red Table Talk episode earlier in July.) The tune references the two’s relationship with lines such as “That ain’t my girl, but I got the key to the crib and to the car” and “You left your man just to f–k with me and break his heart.” Listen to the song here.
