Will Smith said it was “love at first sight” when he laid eyes on Jada Pinkett Smith.
In his new memoir “Will,” the I Am Legend actor revealed that he was smitten when he first caught a glimpse of the Set It Off actress after she auditioned for a role on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” Although it was all butterflies for him, she apparently didn’t feel the same way after finding out that she didn’t meet the height requirements to play Smith’s love interest on the show.
“She was pissed,” he wrote. “Apparently, the casting agent had just told her she wasn’t tall enough to play my girlfriend on the show. She hated that about Hollywood — that somehow her height (or lack thereof) was of more vital importance to the art than her abundant talents. Oblivious to all of this, I stepped into the river.”
“‘Whatup, shawty?’ I said, poorly choosing my descriptive,” the King Richard actor wrote.
“‘Whatever nigga, move,’ she said, gesturing me away with the swat of her hand,” Smith added in his autobiography. “And with that, she was gone. That was the first time I ever saw Jada Pinkett. It was love at first sight.”
After their interesting interaction, Smith and his “Fresh Prince” co-star, Alfonso Ribeiro, devised a plan for him to meet Pinkett Smith on the set of “A Different World.” However, their plan fell apart after Smith met Sheree Zampino, who he married three months later.
Smith’s first marriage did not work out for several reasons, including the fact that he fell in love with his Six Degrees of Separation co-star, Stockard Channing.
Five days after Zampino filed for divorce, the Bad Boys For Life thespian called Pinkett Smith and asked if she was seeing anyone. He then said, “Cool, you’re seeing me now. Aight?” The two got married in 1997 and later welcomed two children together.