Jada Pinkett Smith dropped the bombshell that she and Will Smith have been separated for the last seven years in a headline-grabbing interview last week.

But now, the actress has retracted the explosive revelation, insisting the couple are in fact ‘working very hard’ at bringing their relationship ‘back to a life partnership’ and are ‘concentrating on healing’.

In a new interview with Today, the 52-year-old claimed that people initially ‘missed’ that she was trying to explain that she and Will, 55, had not called it quits.

It comes just days after Jada shocked the world by sharing that the pair had been living ‘completely separate lives’ as of 2016 because they were ‘exhausted with trying’ to repair their union – and were living apart when Will seemingly defended her honor by slapping comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars last year when he made a joke at her expense.

Clarifying her comments on the Today show on Monday, ahead of the release of her new memoir, Worthy, Jada said: ‘We are working very hard at bringing our relationship, yes, bringing our relationship back together… Back to a life partnership, yes.

Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed that she and her husband Will Smith are ‘working very hard’ at bringing their marriag

e back together again

The actress admitted last week that she and Will  have been separated for the last seven years

‘Husband-wife marriage for me, for my healing process. I came into that with very specific ideas, right? Very specific ideas that were blocks. To me just seeing Will to who he is. He can’t be this perfect idealized husband.

‘I have to be able to accept him for the human he is. He accepts me for the human that I am, and we want to love each other there. We really have been working hard.’

Jada’s clarification shocked host Hoda Kotb, who replied in disbelief: ‘Oh! Okay. Well, I didn’t know that.’

‘That’s the point I was trying to tell you,’ the actress continued. ‘You totally missed that. That’s the whole thing.’

Hoda asked: ‘There might not be a divorce in theory anymore?’

The Girls Trip actress replied: ‘Yeah. No. We really have been working hard.’

‘So, wait,’ a confused Hoda replied. ‘Just so I’m 100 per cent sure. You were divorced not on paper.’

‘Right,’ Jada said.

Speaking to Hoda in a pre-recorded interview on the program last week, Jada had explained why her marriage to Will broke down.

Jada insisted on the Today show that she had been trying to get across her and Will’s commitment to repairing their marriage

‘By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying,’ she said. ‘I think we were both still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.

‘I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce. We will work through whatever. And I just haven’t been able to break that promise.’

‘But you still live separately?’ Hoda probed, with Jada confirming: ‘We live separately’.

Jada and Will married in 1997 and have previously addressed separations and marital troubles in the past, but continued to repeatedly gush about their romance in interviews and online.

Even after Jada admitted that she’d had an affair with singer August Alsina in a 2020 episode of her Facebook Watch show Red Table Talk, the pair continued to brazenly declare their love and commitment for one another, putting on loved-up displays on the red carpet, sharing Instagram tributes, and regularly referring to one another as ‘husband’ and ‘wife’.

Then there was the moment that Will appeared to defend his wife’s honor by storming the stage and slapping Chris at the Oscars after he poked fun at her bald hairstyle – not long after she had revealed she was suffering from alopecia.

The prominent Hollywood couple share two children, Jaden, 25, and Willow, 22, as well as a son, Trey, 30, from Will’s first marriage to Sheree Zampino.

They were said to be extremely ‘relieved’ that news of their parents’ separation was finally out of the bag after they were dragged into the couple’s public lies by having to ‘pretend’ their mom and dad were in marital bliss.

Over the weekend, Will broke his silence on his wife’s admissions, admitting in an email to the New York Times that he had developed ’emotional blindness’ to her ‘hidden nuances’.

The publication claimed her new memoir ‘kind of woke Will up’ as he realized that his wife was living ‘more on the edge’ than he’d first thought and was ‘more resilient, clever and compassionate than he’d understood’.

‘When you’ve been with someone for more than half of your life a sort of emotional blindness sets in, and you can all too easily lose your sensitivity to their hidden nuances and subtle beauties,’ he wrote in the email.

Hitting shelves October 17! Jada has been promoting her 416-page memoir Worthy

Jada (seen with Will in 2022 – six years after they separated) said she considered a legal divorce but could never go through with it

Jada and Will pictured at the Oscars in 2022 with their children Jaden and Willow, as well as Will’s son Trey, 30, by his first wife Sheree Zampino

He also posted a video of himself on a boat on Instagram with the caption: ‘Notifications off :).’

Jada commented with two laughing emojis.

News of their separation last week came as a shock to many, with the couple criticized in the wake of Jada’s admission.

The View’s Ana Navarro suggested it was an ‘unseemly’ money making ploy to help the actress ‘sell books’.

‘I think she’s having a relationship with her bank account because every time she needs to, like, increase the ratings of the Red Table, every time she needs to sell books, she drops these bombshells,’ Ana said. ‘I find it unseemly.’

Speaking on the View podcast, she later added: ‘I don’t know Will Smith or Jada. I like Will Smith so much, I grew up with him, I grew up with the Fresh Prince, I love his movies, I like his vibe, he seems like such a nice guy, and I feel sorry for him. I feel like he’s continuously being belittled and embarrassed by Jada for I don’t know what reason.’