On a rainy Los Angeles evening, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith stroll into a cozy, out-of-the-way Italian restaurant. They laugh together about having been asked to pay the parking valet—when Will, in fact, parked their big black SUV himself. The chuckles between the couple are good-natured, and though Will is more than a foot taller than his wife—even in her buttery high-heeled boots—the pair look and move like teammates who’ve been winning together for a long time.
Will and Jada do have an argument, though, Abbott and Costello–style, right at one of Ca’ Del Sole’s most secluded tables. The sudden little debate is all about when exactly their first kiss happened.
Will, in a joking way, starts it by stating a vague time and place.
Jada says, “Are you talking about that time?”
“That wasn’t the time.”
“You don’t know what time I’m talking about,” she says with a giggle.
“I know just what you’re talking about,” Will says, “and we’re talking about the same time, but different times.”
“Oh,” Jada says, smiling at the memory, and pushing at his big shoulder. “But still, it was the first time.”
“Look,” he says, turning back to face his wife, “you were already in love just by the passion you put into that first kiss.”
Now it’s Jada’s turn to clarify. “I knew at that moment,” she says earnestly. “He put a little…force into the kiss.”
Force?!?
“I like kissing. I like to put a little exploration into the kiss.”
Jada’s eyes go gently euphoric. “Will,” she says, “he held my arm behind my back.”
What? Our Jada and Will? Getting down like that?
Yes. Jada Koren Pinkett Smith, sensible, determined daughter of a nurse and a contractor, a former Miss Maryland (1988), movie star (The Nutty Professor, Collateral), gets a dreamy, slinky tone in her voice.
“I was like, mmmmmm… people don’t really know about the Fresh Prince,” Jada says. “He got some stuff. They don’t know about this Will.”