The actress, 50, took to Instagram on Monday with a heartfelt message for her husband of 25 years on his 55th birthday.
But the post was soon flooded with scathing comments from other social media users who criticized the sentiment in light of Jada’s earlier remarks about their marriage.
The mom-of-two previously revealed how she cried all the way down the aisle on her wedding day before famously referring to the years-long affair with R&B singer August Alsina, now 31, as an ‘entanglement.’
The birthday tribute, shared with Jada’s 11.4 million followers, featured a black-and-white throwback photo of the couple and their two children as well as Will’s son, Trey, from a previous marriage.
She wrote: ‘Willard. I am so glad you were born on this day. Without you I would not have experienced the greatest joy of my life… the love of our family.
‘On this divine assignment we’ve chosen to walk together, I am grateful for the wells of laughter along the trails of tears we’ve shared.
‘Thank you for helping me learn to embrace it all … with a smile. Here’s to 100+ more birthdays full of growth, acceptance and joy.’
But it was soon met with backlash with many quick to allude to Jada’s previous admissions about the marriage.
One wrote: ‘I hope you will stop humiliating him.’
Another said: ‘Didn’t you cheat? Get real!!’
And a third sarcastically added: ‘Aren’t you glad you married him even when you were crying and didn’t want to? So cute.’
The comments referred to a series of disclosures that Jada has previously made about her relationship with Will.
In 2018, during an episode of Red Table Talk where Will appeared as a guest, Jada insisted she ‘never wanted to get married’ – having tied the knot on New Year’s Eve 1997 at the Gothic-style Cloisters Castle in a suburb of her hometown of Baltimore.
In the recently resurfaced clip, the star discussed her reservations about marriage before revealing that she decided to tie the knot with Will in order to placate her mother after getting pregnant.
Will and Jada conceived their son Jaden while they were still dating and Jada said on the show: ‘I knew the moment after the act that I was pregnant.’
She revealed she ‘cried that whole night’ because she realized that ‘my life was never gonna be the same’ after she became a mother.
‘I really didn’t wanna get married,’ Jada confessed, prompting Will to say with a laugh: ‘We only got married because Gammy was crying.’
‘It was almost as if Gammy was like: “You have to get married, so let’s talk about the wedding,”‘ said Jada, noting that ‘I was under so much pressure, you know, being a young actress, being young, and I was just like pregnant and I just, I was just like, I didn’t know what to do, but I just knew, I was like, I never wanted to be married.’
‘I remember feeling very strongly and wanting you guys to be married,’ said Adrienne, who was a teenager when she became pregnant with Jada and briefly married the father Robsol Pinkett Jr.
Jada agreed that she never wanted a wedding either, describing her feelings at the time: ‘And now Gammy done gone to Will crying about I don’t want a wedding, and now I’m being forced to have a wedding, when really I just wanted it to be the two of us on a mountain, ’cause I was like: “This is serious business.”‘
Adrienne apologized ‘that I didn’t respect your wishes,’ admitting she that she was being ‘selfish’ in insisting on a full ceremony because Jada was ‘my only child’ and this was Adrienne’s one chance to watch her daughter get married.
Both Jada and Will agreed that the marriage was ultimately ‘the right call,’ but Jada and Adrienne confessed the wedding was ‘horrible.’
But this was not her only misstep after admitting to a years-long affair.
The couple made headlines in July 2020 when they addressed Jada’s affair with August Alsina on her candid talk show Red Table Talk.
She began explaining the couple met August through their son Jaden, 22, and recalled the singer, who would have been 23 at the time, was ‘really sick’ (as he battled a genetic liver disease.)
Jada said: ‘And it all started with him just needing some help, me wanting to help his health, his mental state.
‘The outpouring for him from our family was initially about his health,’ she said. ‘We found all those different resources to help pull him through and from there you and I were going through a very difficult time.’
After Jada’s confession, Will admitted: ‘I was done with you,’ while Jada added that they decided to separate for a ‘period of time.’
‘And then what did you do, Jada?’ Will asked, urging his wife to keep talking.
‘As time went on, I got into a different type of entanglement with August,’ Jada explained.
The mother-of-two went on to respond to August’s claim that Will gave her ‘permission’ to have an affair.
When Will pushed Jada to clarify what she meant by ‘entanglement’ she responded, ‘It was a relationship, absolutely.’
Jada continued: ‘I was in a lot of pain, and I was very broken. In the process of that relationship I definitely realized that you can’t find happiness outside yourself.’
She denied August’s claim that Will had given his blessing over the affair and claimed they were separated at the time.
The affair sent shockwaves through the world with many turning to Will to see how the movie star would react.
Curiously, Jada had initially denied August’s claims they were an item, until she eventually confessed saying ‘there’s some healing that needs to happen.’
