Jada Pinkett Smith told The Daily Mail in an interview published Saturday (December 9th) that she’s grateful her husband, Will Smith, slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards. The reason for this is because she believes it saved her marriage with the King Richard actor.

“After all those years trying to figure out if I would leave Will’s side, it took that slap for me to see I will never leave him,” she said. “Who knows where our relationship would be if that hadn’t happened?”

The pair have been married since 1997, and the Set It Off actor revealed in her new memoir, Worthy, that they had been secretly separated since 2016.

“I call it the ‘holy slap’ now because so many positive things came after it,” she added. “That moment of the s–t hitting the fan is when you see where you really are.”