Joshua Jackson and Jodie Turner-Smith are one of our favourite couples here at Voices not just because they look fabulous together, but because of how they as well as calling out racism when they see it.
And now there’s even more reason to love them. As Joshua Jackson The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon back in July, it was actually Turner-Smith who asked him to marry her.
“I knew the moment she asked me,” he said. “She asked me on New Year’s Eve. We were in Nicaragua — it was very beautiful, incredibly romantic, we were walking down the beach, and she asked me to marry her.”
He went on to tell Fallon: “There was a lead-up to it. I did not know [it was coming], but she was quite adamant, and she was right. This is the best choice I ever made.”
Cue extensive swooning and awwws!
Except for some reason, the fact that Turner-Smith asked Jackson to marry her (because it was a woman asking a man) rubbed people the wrong way. Apparently people were taking to Turner-Smith’s Instagram account to make negative comments about her proposal – something Jackson addressed in his .
“Good God, you cannot believe the things people were leaving my wife on Instagram. She did it. I said 'yes.' We're happy. That's it. That's all you need to know,” Jackson said.
He went on to say there was more about the proposal than he had previously revealed.
“Yes, my wife did propose to me and yes, I did say yes, but what I didn't say in that interview was there was a caveat, which is that I'm still old school enough that I said, 'This is a yes, but you have to give me the opportunity [to do it too].'”
He continued, “She has a biological father and a stepdad, who's the man who raised her. [I said], 'You have to give me the opportunity to ask both of those men for your hand in marriage.' And then, 'I would like the opportunity to re-propose those to you and do it the old fashioned way down on bended knee.' So, that's actually how the story ended up”
So Jackson and Turner-Smith proposed to each other.
But for the most part it seems strange that anyone would have an issue with a woman proposing to a man in this day and age. Even though American statistics at least show us that in heterosexual couples,. The statistics are probably pretty similar for us in Australia. But even though there are very few women proposing, why would anyone have a problem with it?
Jackson seems to know the reason why. As he mentioned in his interview with Refinery29, the reason some online commentators had an issue about Turner-Smith proposing to him, was to do with her race.
“That has been a real education for me as a white man, truly,” he said. “The way people get in her comments and the ignorance and ugliness that comes her way is truly shocking. And it has been a necessary, but an unpleasant education in just the way people relate to Black bodies in general, but Black female bodies in specific. It is not okay. We have a long way to go.”
He went on to say: “I think it's like a golden cage, the concept of the strong Black woman. I would wish for my wife that she would not have to rise above with such amazing strength and grace, above the ugliness that people throw at her on a day to day.”
This is not the first time Jackson has spoken about racism and the racial blind spots in our society.
“It is so easy to be blind as a white person inside this society to the constant drumbeat of oppression against your skin,” he told back in 2019. “I don’t have to touch it, I don’t have to feel it... The blind spot for me was being reminded that [Black people] can’t take Black off. There is no moment for you that you don’t have to deal with the reality of how you are being treated by the broader society, even if it’s not in that moment it’s a constant underlying white noise of your life.”
Interestingly enough, 2019 was the same year Jackson started dating Turner-Smith.
It’s been a whirlwind two years for the couple, but one thing’s for sure, this dynamic duo is changing things up in the Hollywood celebrity circuit and calling out racism as well as problematic behaviours when they see it - something we love to see!
Saman Shad is a freelance writer.
