Jada Pinkett Smith says she and Will have been separated for 7 years. Here’s what you need to know.

Time to pull up a chair at the Red Table.

In a new interview with Hoda Kotb, Jada Pinkett Smith revealed that she and Will Smith have been separated since 2016. The revelation is part of an upcoming NBC special in promotion of Pinkett Smith’s new memoir, Worthy.

The Smiths are still legally married, but Pinkett Smith told Kotb that the pair aren’t together romantically. In public over the years, they kept up appearances of being together — even though there have been decades’ worth of rumors that they were in an open relationship.

Here’s what you need to know.

Smith, 55, and Pinkett Smith, 52, met in 1994 on the set of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. A year later, they began dating, following Smith’s divorce from his first wife, Sheree Zampino.

They were engaged in 1997 and Pinkett became pregnant with the couple’s first of two children shortly after. They got married the same year in Baltimore, where Pinkett is from.

Since then, the couple have shared career and personal peaks and valleys, with a mix of successful acting endeavors, affair rumors, a shared film production company, a popular podcast series, and the infamous Oscars slap.

» READ MORE: Don’t call Will Smith’s Oscar night assault ‘a Philly thing’

In 2013, an interview between Pinkett Smith and HuffPost Live sparked questions about the Smiths’ marriage status.

“I’ve always told Will, ‘You can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be OK,’” she said. “Because at the end of the day, Will is his own man. I’m here as his partner, but he is his own man. He has to decide who he wants to be, and that’s not for me to do for him. Or vice versa.”

The rumor mill prompted Pinkett Smith to clarify her statement in a Facebook post.

“Here is how I will change my statement,” she wrote. “Will and I BOTH can do WHATEVER we want, because we TRUST each other to do so. This does NOT mean we have an open relationship … this means we have a GROWN one.”

Still, divorce rumors continued to swirl.

By 2015, Will Smith took to his Facebook to announce: “In the interest of redundant, repetitious, over & over-again-ness … Jada and I are … NOT GETTING A DIVORCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

In 2018, the couple revealed that they don’t use traditional labels like “husband” and “wife,” but rather, “life partners.”

In 2020, Pinkett Smith shared details on her podcast Red Table Talk about separating from Smith in 2016 and entering into a relationship with R&B singer August Alsina.

In the episode, Pinkett Smith sat across from Smith and they discussed that point in their lives and relationship.

They discussed going through dark times and working through struggles together.

“We came together young, and we were both broken in our own ways, and to be able to make mistakes without the fear of losing your family is so critical,” Smith said, adding that they came out of that chapter with “unconditional love” for each other.

Despite the public appearances and interviews, Pinkett Smith told Kotb that the couple has not been together for seven years.

When asked about the secrecy, Pinkett Smith told Kotb it had to do with not being ready to go public with the separation.

“[We were] still trying to figure out, between the two of us, how to be in partnership,” Pinkett Smith said. “In regards to ‘how do we present that to people?’ we hadn’t figured that out.”

She added that there were “a lot of things” that contributed to the fractured relationship.

“By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying,” she said.

In a new cover story interview with People Magazine, Pinkett Smith said the pair are “still figuring it out.”

“We’ve been doing some really heavy-duty work together,” she said. “We just got deep love for each other and we are going to figure out what that looks like for us.”

Pinkett Smith revealed that she and Smith live separately but still do not plan to get a legal divorce.

Kotb’s one-hour prime time special with Pinkett Smith will air 8 p.m. Friday on NBC.

During the interview, the pair will walk through Pinkett Smith’s hometown of Baltimore and discuss details from her upcoming memoir, Worthy.

In an exclusive clip from that interview, Pinkett Smith confirms to Kotb that there’s more to her marriage than she has previously shared.

Worthy comes out Oct. 17 and is available for preorder now. It retails for about $15 to $30, depending on the format and retailer.