Julian de la Joya
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith are ready to set it off—in court.
After Brother Bilal, a man claiming to be Will’s former assistant, alleged in an interview that the Hitch star slept with friend Duane Martin, the couple has responded to the rumor.
“This story is completely fabricated,” Will’s rep told E! News in a Nov. 15 statement, “and the claim is unequivocally false.”
As for Jada, she also slammed the accusations, labeling it as “ridiculous” and “nonsense.”
“This is a person that tried a shakedown, a money shakedown that didn’t work,” she said an in preview of a Nov. 16 appearance on The Breakfast Club. “We’re gonna take legal action. Because it’s one thing to have your opinion about somebody, versus just making up salacious, malicious stories. That’s actionable. So, we gonna roll with that.”
The Set It Off star—who recently shared she and Will have been separated since 2016—emphasized that the pair are about to “take legal action,” stating that the Academy Award winner and Bilal may have had their differences over a business deal.
“It’s based around this person’s idea that they, in some way, were doing business around Will’s book, and that they spent money, or what have you, and that they needed to be compensated,” she said of Will’s 2021 self-titled memoir. “So, he already tried to do this money shakedown.”
Jada also went on to note that the King Richard star finds the whole situation “funny,” recalling that he asked her, “‘Do you believe this s–t?'”
“Because it’s absolutely ridiculous,” the Red Table Talk host noted. “It’s unfortunate, but you know, we just laughed about it.”
E! News has reached out to Duane’s reps and Bilal for comment and has not heard back.
