"A queen is her own savior. Her magic is quiet, potent and mysterious."
So Jada Pinkett Smith noted in her 2023 memoir Worthy, describing her preferred approach to life in the face of endless speculation about her marriage, family, health, career and more.
Because for all the times she hasn't seemed particularly quiet, she really was keeping plenty for herself before dropping the bombshell that she and husband Will Smith had been separated for six years before his Oscar-winning night in 2022 took a turn, seemingly in the course of defending his wife's honor.
And as Jada detailed, she had a lot to work out, not least the vow she and Will made to not get divorced no matter what.
"We're staying together forever," she said on The Drew Barrymore Show in November—and a version of that sentiment made its way into most of the conversations she had in the course of promoting her New York Times best seller.
But as Jada turns 53 on Sept. 18, where is she at now?
Well, according to a Sept. 1 post marking the looming end of summer, her heart "has been blooming in so many ways."
The next day, she switched her Instagram setting to private and posted a graphic reading, "A man can CHOOSE to belong to someone. And if he does...he is considered noble. A woman is told she MUST belong to someone or...she is not worthy."
Next to it she wrote a lengthy caption expounding on the view of women—even goddesses—as powerless or otherwise incomplete without their male counterpart.
"We mere mortal women are worthy simply because we exist!," Jada added. And furthermore, she wrote, "if we so CHOOSE to bond with someone from this space … we will erect monumental love and give birth to treasures."
So the queen is still wont to confront her 10.9 million Instagram followers with the occasional mystery.
Will, meanwhile, has been all over the world lately, from Italy (where he yachted with Johnny Depp and appeared at a tribute to Andrea Bocelli in the singer's home town of Lajatico), Switzerland, Spain and Lake Como (where he drag-raced on the water against Rafael Nadal) to Azerbaijan (where he also performed and reunited with pal Lewis Hamilton at the Ferrari garage) and Brazil, where he's scheduled to take the stage at Rock in Rio on Sept. 19.
Though they didn't show off any evidence that they traveled much together this summer, Jada gave Will a sweet shout-out on Father's Day alongside a photo of the actor stealing some shut-eye as his wife, mother-in-law Adrienne Banfield-Norris and kids—son Trey Smith from his previous marriage, Jaden Smith and Willow Smith—gathered round.
On May 23, Jada was with Will in Dubai for the world premiere of Bad Boys: Ride or Die, and a week later she posed for photos on the red carpet with their whole family at the movie's L.A. premiere, their first step-and-repeat since she revealed their separation in October 2023.
All of which seemed like a step in the direction of not leading separate lives.
"We are together," Jada told NPR's Britanny Luse on the It's Been a Minute podcast in February. "But we are together in a way that works for us, and that's really difficult to explain."
They're not your average couple, she acknowledged, but "we enjoy what we are."
Asked about describing her relationship with Will as "a masterpiece of connection" during her book tour last year, the Girls Trip star explained, "I think everybody's life is their own work of art and then we have many pieces within it. I have a lot of ideas around marriage and I think it can be one of the most powerful dynamics."
She offered some words of hard-fought wisdom, however, to anyone counting on 24/7 marital bliss.
"If you're looking to stay in a cycle of romanticism, if you're looking to stay in the honeymoon stage, if you're looking to never be betrayed, if you're looking to never be hurt," Jada said, "if you're looking to not have to deal with your s--t and have to deal with the s--t of someone else, don't get married. Date."
She added, "You cannot make a cake with all sugar. In one lifetime, we've lived about 20...If I had to say what kind of art piece our union is, I would say it is a tapestry."
Jada, a graduate of the Baltimore School for the Arts, was also leaning back into painting. "I love textures," she said, "so that's what I'm really playing with right now. And I love the juxtaposition of going from beauty to rough, the balance of both."
And she was especially relishing seeing Willow find her voice as a singer.
Watching her daughter "makes my heart light up," Jada said, "because she does it so much better than me, first of all. Let's just start there."
She shared that then-5-year-old Willow used to come along to club when she performed with her nu metal band Wicked Wisdom—"I would have her on the shoulders of, like, one of my security guards," Jada recalled—and the child "loved it."
And now, "I got to give her her props," Jada continued, "'cause she's—I'm a performer, you know what I mean?—Willow's a musician. And there's a big difference."
Moreover, she said there wasn't a better gift for a mom than "being able to see your daughter unapologetically express so many different sides of herself."
And Jada knows a few things about the highs and lows of sharing one's truth with the world.
"Having the courage to be with all that we are, even in the face of the disappointment and the anger and resentment that comes with the breaking of the romantic idea around the feminine," she explained, "part of the freedom and part of the empowerment of women is being able to withstand that."
Since the Worthy roll-out, she'd been "decompressing from the book," she said. "That's one of the projects I'm most proud of in a long time."
And because "the relationship with yourself is the greatest masterpiece," she noted, "I'm always working on Jada. That's just always."
Keep reading to see Jada's evolution through the years: