LOS ANGELES • American R&B singer August Alsina surprised many people on June 30 when he disclosed his alleged romance with Jada Pinkett Smith, wife of actor Will Smith.
Alsina, 27, said he was involved in a relationship with the 48-year-old actress, after he met her through her son Jaden in 2015.
"I totally gave myself to that relationship for years of my life, and I truly and really, really deeply love and have a ton of love for her," he said in the interview with radio personality Angela Yee on YouTube.
Last Friday, Pinkett Smith appeared on her Web television talk show Red Table Talk with her husband.
She usually hosts the show with her daughter Willow Smith and her mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris.
She talked about her relationship with Alsina after her husband asked her: "So what happened, Jada?"
She said the affair took place several years ago when she and Smith - married since 1997 - were briefly separated.
"Four and a half years ago... I started a friendship with August and we actually became really, really good friends," she said. "And it all started with him just needing some help, me wanting to help his health, his mental state."
Alsina has talked about battling with an auto-immune disease.
Pinkett Smith said she and Smith, 51, were going through a bad patch in their marriage during that time, and they "basically broke up".
"I got into an entanglement with August," she said.
But she denied Alsina's claim that her husband gave permission for the affair and said they reconciled after she ended the relationship.
The actress added that she has not contacted Alsina for a long time, so she felt strange when he brought up their relationship late last month.
At the end of the show, the Smiths bumped fists and said jokingly: "We ride together, we die together. Bad marriage for life."
The line was a quote from Will Smith's Bad Boys film series (1995 to 2020).
The couple have been dogged by rumours after Alsina released his remix Nunya last year, which talked about his relationship with a woman who has rejected him.
