The Truth About Will Smith Falling In Love With Stockard Channing While Married To Someone Else
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith — married since 1997 — have long been viewed as one of Hollywood's healthiest relationships. Maybe to the relief of the rest of us, Will and Jada began opening up in the mid-aughts about the hardships faced in their relationship, as well. After rumors emerged over the years of Will being involved with various co-stars, Jada indirectly addressed them on SiriusXM's "The Howard Stern Show" in 2015, per The Independent. She admitted to host Howard Stern, "You gotta trust who you're with, and at the end of the day, I'm not here to be anybody's watcher... as long as Will can look himself in the mirror and be OK, I'm good."
Then it was Jada who confronted her affair with R&B singer August Alsina during a July 2020 episode of her "Red Table Talk" show. "It all started with him just needing some help, me wanting to help his health, his mental state." The two's relationship, however, quickly evolved into what Jada now famously called an "entanglement." Months later, in GQ, Will revealed that "Jada never believed in conventional marriage," having grown up with models of such relationships around her. Moreover, the couple had "significant endless discussions about, what is relational perfection? What is the perfect way to interact as a couple?"
But Will's involvement in unconventional relationships didn't just start with Jada — as it turns out, he fell in love with someone else when married to his first wife.
Will Smith's method acting led to real feelings
Will Smith's November 9 memoir "Will" is promising eye-opening details from the movie megastar's life — that is if his revelation about "Six Degrees of Separation" costar Stockard Channing is any indication. In an excerpt obtained by People, Smith describes how he developed feelings for Channing over the course of filming during his first marriage to Sheree Zampino. His son Trey Smith with Zampino was just born at the time, but Smith said method acting was getting to him.
"Sheree and I were in the first few months of our marriage with a brand-new baby and for Sheree, I can imagine that this experience was unsettling to say the least," Smith writes. "She'd married a guy named Will Smith and now she was living with a guy named Paul Poitier. And to make matters worse, during shooting I fell in love with Stockard Channing." Smith, along with his wife and baby, returned home to L.A. after filming, but as he describes in his book, "Our marriage was off to a rocky start. I found myself desperately yearning to see and speak to Stockard."
Believe it or not — Smith had previously spoken about an attraction to Channing in a February 2015 interview with Esquire. "I got a taste early of the dangers of going too far for a character," he said of filming "Six Degrees of Separation." As for Channing? She described herself as being "flattered," telling Page Six, "It's amazing for me to hear that he felt that way, I'm delighted."