Who is Jodie Turner Smith, Joshua Jackson's Ex-Wife?
Jodie Turner-Smith's career is blossoming faster than her ex-husband's.
Summary
- Joshua Jackson and Jodie Turner-Smith were married from 2019 to 2023.
- They share custody of their daughter.
- Jackson's ex-wife has skyrocketing fame.
Joshua Jackson is undoubtedly a household name, especially to those who have seen him on The WB's cult teen drama Dawson's Creek and Fox's sci-fi drama Fringe, followed immediately by Showtime's acclaimed psychological drama The Affair. Now, one of his most important roles is in Peacock's Dr. Death, which earned him a nomination for Best Limited Series Actor at the 2022 Critics' Choice Television Awards.
Today, however, we're not focusing on Jackson, but on his ex-wife, to whom he was married from 2019 to 2023. We're talking about Jodie Turner-Smith, who has long since stepped out of her ex-husband's shadow and established herself as a major actress whose roles are getting bigger every year. Let's get to the bottom of who she is, why she and Joshua Jackson got divorced, and what her career plans are.
Who Is Joshua Jackson's Ex-wife?
c, 37, was born in Peterborough, England, to Jamaican parents. After her parents divorced, she moved with her mother and siblings to the United States, to Gaithersburg, Maryland. She then graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, where she studied finance and worked in a bank, not considering an acting career. But when she met Pharrell Williams backstage at a concert, she decided to try her hand at acting and moved to Los Angeles in 2009.
For a few years, Jodie modeled while writing poetry as a hobby. Then, in 2013, she landed a small role on True Blood, followed by bigger and bigger roles. In 2016, for example, she starred in Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon and appeared in the never-released series Nightflyers, based on a horror novella by George R. R. Martin.
However, Turner-Smith gained widespread recognition after starring in 2019's romantic crime drama Queen & Slim and, most notably, collaborating with Kogonada to star opposite Colin Farrell and Justin H. Min in 2021's After Yang. A string of high-profile feature projects followed: White Noise with Noah Baumbach, The Independent with Amy Rice, Murder Mystery 2 with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. And, of course, she is best known today for her role as Mother Aniseya, leader of the Force-sensitive witches' coven in Star Wars: The Acolyte.
Who Was Jodie Turner-Smith Married To?
Jodie Turner-Smith was married to Joshua Jackson. Yes, folks, the Dawson's Creek alum was the actress' only husband. They met at a charity event in LA in 2018, and within a year, they were married and expecting a child, Juno, who was born in April 2020.
Unfortunately, both spouses experienced no small amount of backlash during their marriage, both from racist Jackson fans and PoCs who accused Turner-Smith of internal racism:
'The most painful was the commentary about why I had chosen him for a partner, that I chose him because I hated myself, because I wanted a light-skinned baby: All these things that are not an accurate reflection of why a person falls in love or at least why this person did.'
Sadly, this was one of the reasons Turner-Smith filed for divorce in October 2023, due to 'irreconcilable differences.' Their daughter has joint custody, and Jodie's mother, Hilda, regularly visits her granddaughter on set with Juno.
Jackson began dating a new actress, Lupita Nyong'o, just two months after the divorce proceedings began, but Turner-Smith doesn't mind, believing that a healthy relationship between parents is imperative to a child's happiness.
Hopefully Jodie will have plenty of happy moments of her own as her career takes off: Bill Lawrence's Bad Monkey is coming soon to Apple TV+, and two feature films, Joachim Rønning's Tron: Ares and Kogonada's A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, are due out next year.
Source: The Cut.