Sheree Zampino Doesn’t Agree With Will Smith Calling Their Marriage An ‘Ultimate Failure’

The Red Table Talk is back with a new episode, and on this one, Sheree Zampino talks about her former marriage to Will Smith. Zampino says she didn’t like Smith calling their marriage a failure in a 2020 Father’s Day episode of Red Table Talk. 

This became a topic of conversation after TikTok influencer Kat Stickler submitted a virtual question about how to not fail again after her recent breakup with her ex Mike Stickler. 

Zampino responded, “That’s a heavy word because, if you remember, Will had said that this was his greatest failure.”

She continued, “I had an issue with that because I didn’t understand how we could do what we do as a blended family, and do it as well as we do, and as loving as we do, and have an amazing son, and it’s looked at as a failure.”

In the Father’s Day episode, Smith described getting a divorce from The Real House of Beverly Hills star as the “ultimate failure” for him and the “worst thing” in his adult life. 

“I’ve been hurt a lot in my adult life, but I don’t think anything touches the failure of getting divorced from my 2-year-old son’s mother,” Smith, 54, said in the past episode. 

Smith and Zampino got married in 1992 but divorced in 1995 when their son Trey was just two-years-old. He met her in 1991 when visiting the set of A Different World. The Grammy-award-winning artist was planning to meet his now wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith, through a third-party introduction but ended up meeting and marrying Zampino instead. 

“It did what it was supposed to do, so that was successful,” Zampino added of her former marriage with Smith during the recent RTT episode. “And that had to end so that something else could begin.”

Pinkett-Smith jumped into the conversation to emphasize the importance of reframing how we see relationships. 

“I think what we consider success in relationships has to be redefined,” Pinkett-Smith said. “I’ve had some big lessons on that one.”

Zampino and the Smiths are open about the challenges they’ve faced blending their family over the years. The incipient stages of their blended family weren’t always smooth sailing as they learned to respect one another’s boundaries and communicate. Zampino, 54, touched on this in an August episode of the “Behind the Velvet Rope” podcast. 

“With Jada, it was like, as long as she treats [Trey] well, we’re good. We’re good. And she’s treated him well, and she’s loved him. … You have three different dynamics, personalities, belief systems, and ways of doing things. And there were times we bumped heads, and it hasn’t been pretty. But listen, we get back on that horse and press on. We do what we must do because, again, at the end of the day, it’s about the kids.”