Jada Pinkett Smith says COVID-19 has tested her marriage with Will Smith

By Danielle Long & Carson Blackwelder

Jada Pinkett Smith just got real about how COVID-19 has impacted her marriage to Will Smith.

During Wednesday's episode of "Red Table Talk" on Facebook Watch, for an episode titled "How Your Relationship Can Survive Quarantine," the 48-year-old actress, who has been quarantined with her husband of 23 years amid the lockdown, opened up and made a candid confession while sitting between her daughter, Willow Smith, and her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Jones.

"One of the things I’ve realized is that I don’t know Will at all," she revealed.

"I feel like there’s a layer that you get to, right? Life gets busy and you create these stories in your head and then you hold onto these stories and that is your idea of your partner -- [but] that’s not who your partner is," the "Girls Trip" star added. "So, [we're] going through the process of having to dissolve all the stories and all of the ideas of Will that I have built around those stories."

This, Pinkett Smith noted, is what true intimacy is, "being able to get to who our loved ones are beyond that which we have perceived."

One of the things the couple has done differently to help their marriage survive the pandemic is taking the time to learn to love themselves individually because "there's an aspect of yourself you don't know either" and "building a friendship along the way."

"Because you get into all of these ideas of what intimate relationships are supposed to look like, what marriage is supposed to be," Pinkett Smith added.

For the well-timed episode, Pinkett Smith was joined by intimacy counselor Michaela Boehm, who provided some practical tools to help couples maintain their relationships during this uncertain time. Famed Pastor John Gray and his wife Aventer Gray also appeared via a socially distanced video chat to share how being in isolation has affected his marriage and family dynamic.