Jada Pinkett Smith says she didn't want to marry Will Smith
"I had never seen a happy marriage," she said.
Jada Pinkett Smith and her husband Will Smith are all smiles now, but when they were dating, Pinkett Smith says she's wasn't thinking about tying the knot with her now-husband.
"I never wanted to get married," Pinkett Smith told People in this week's cover story.
"But my mother was like, 'You have to get married' – she's so old school – and Will wanted a family," she continued. "So I said, 'Alright, maybe it's something I should do."
Although the actress admits she fell hard for Smith when they first started dating in 1995, Pinkett Smith says that after she got pregnant with their son Jaden two years later, she's wasn't necessarily down for a traditional wedding.
"Gammy freaking called Will and cried her freaking eyes out, so then I had to have a wedding and that was infuriating," says Pinkett Smith, who reveals she was in her first trimester and experience morning sickness when she said "I do" on New Year's Eve, 1997.
Jaden was born in July 1998 and their daughter, Willow, was born two years later. Pinkett Smith now says marrying Smith was a great decision, but back then she didn't see the happy ending.
"I had never seen a happy marriage," she says. "I adored Will, I f——- adored him, but I just didn't want to be married."
Even though the two have been legally married for 21 years, Pinkett Smith says she and Smith don't still subscribe to a traditional marriage.
"It's more of a life partnership," she said. "I don't own him. He doesn't own me. He has to be his own person first, and vice versa… Love is freedom."