Joshua Jackson Defends Jodie-Turner Smith Proposing to Him (2025)

Joshua Jackson has mastered the art of celebrating his wife, actress Jodie Turner-Smith. In June 2021, Jackson—who got his start on Dawson's Creek, and is now starring as a real-life killer surgeon in the terrifying show Dr. Death—took to Twitter to give Jodie Turner-Smith a shout-out.

"Can I just take the moment to not [sic] that my wife has been absolutely smashing the photo shoot game this year," Jackson wrote. Turner-Smith, 34, poked fun at Jackson, 43, by pointing out his typo. "Spelling or no. I’m not wrong," he responded, before proceeding to post an entire thread of her recent cover shoots.

Thanks to exchanges like this, Jackson and Turner-Smith are becoming one of Hollywood's sweetest—not to mention most talented—couples. They were first spotted together at Usher's 40th birthday party in October 2018, according to Us Weekly. They were married in 2019, and the couple welcomed their first daughter in April 2020.

Whereas Jackson has been in the Hollywood game for some time, Turner-Smith is a star on the rise. She broke out with her magnetizing role in , writer Lena Waithe and director Melina Matsoukas's first feature film. In 2021, she'll star as the notorious Anne Boleyn in a new miniseries of the same name.

Here's what you need to know about the woman who stole Pacey's—whoops, we mean Joshua Jackson's—heart.

Turner-Smith proposed to Joshua Jackson on a beach.

Turner-Smith and Jackson let their whirlwind romance speak for itself. During their red carpet debut as a couple for the Queen & Slim premiere in November 2019, the duo donned matching Gucci looks and rings on those fingers. Turner-Smith had a sparkling marquise diamond on her left ring finger, while Jackson wore a brushed gold band on his.

Two years later, in 2021, Jackson opened up about the story of their engagement—and it's a romantic one. While appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Jackson said Turner-Smith was the one who popped the question.

"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 said. As for whether he knew they'd get married? "I knew the moment she asked me."

Jackson said the moment caught him by surprise. "I did not know [she was going to propose]," he said. "But she was quite adamant, and she was right. This is the best choice I ever made." With that, he took off his ring and admired it.

But Jackson proposed, too.

Speaking to Refinery29, Jackson later clarified that there were two proposals. Jackson wanted a chance to propose the "old-fashioned" way, as he put it. He told Turner-Smith at the time, "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."

Jackson also defended his wife against people who questioned her decision to propose. "And also for anybody who is freaked out by a woman claiming her own space, shut the f*** up. 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," he said.

He said the experience has been an "education" for him as a white man. "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 said.

The couple welcomed their first baby in April 2020.

Turner-Smith and Jackson's daughter was born in April 2020, a year after they got married. Speaking to Fallon, Jackson characterized himself as the kind of dad who can't stop taking photos of his daughter.

"I think there are whole server farms dedicated to just pictures of my baby now," he said. "It's amazing how many pictures you can take of one baby." Jackson added, "[I] checked into the hotel last night, first thing I did was like, 'Hey, did you know I had a baby? Have you seen my baby? She's super cute.' I know all parents think their kid is super cute, but my kid is, like, really super cute."

Turner-Smith opened up about motherhood on Late Night With Seth Meyers, and said she and Jackson enjoyed "cocooning" with their daughter over quarantine.

The duo had an immediate connection when they first met.

Turner-Smith and Jackson met at a party and felt pulled toward one another. "I saw him before he saw me, and when I saw him, I was like, 'I want that,'" Turner-Smith told Seth Meyers. "And then when he saw me, I just pretended like I didn't see him." She said Jackson "felt the energy" she was giving off, and proceeded to "follow [her] around the party" for the rest of the night.

Both are forthcoming with what happened next: They had a one-night stand (which actually lasted three days). "I mean, when we tell the baby the story, I think I'm probably going to lead with, 'I saw your mother from across the room and just like knew I had to be with her,' which is also true," Jackson told Insider. "But my wife is not telling a lie when she says we'd started off mostly with sex." Turner-Smith joked to Meyers, "We're in a two-, three-year one-night stand now."

Queen & Slim was Turner-Smith's first leading role.

Though the 34-year-old worked as a model and has been acting in Hollywood since at least 2013, back when she had a small part as a siren on HBO's True Blood, Queen & Slim was her brekout role. You may have also spotted her in Zayn Malik's 2016 video for his single "Pillow Talk" (she's at the 00:27 mark), and George R. R. Martin's lesser-known TV show, 2018's Nightflyers on SYFY. It's the former that garnered her the attention of more mainstream audiences.

As for how she feels about taking on Waithe and Matsoukas's first feature film? “All these powerful women are doing this project, and I was like, How do I get invited?" Turner-Smith told Essence. “I fell maddeningly in love with the script...and Melina is a force to be reckoned with. Honestly, I don’t think anybody’s f**king with her...Honest to God, I'm terrified.”

She also later told IndieWire: "Seeing how Melina commands a set, how unapologetic she and Lena are about their worth and their talent, was inspiring. Also, trusting Daniel and watching his process, I learned so much throughout, and it really expanded me and who I am as a human being, and an actor.”

Next up? Turner-Smith is taking on Anne Boleyn.

There are never too many period dramas. Turner-Smith stars as Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's doomed second wife, in a Tudor-centric series called—fittingly—Anne Boleyn. Turner-Smith is the first Black woman to play the queen, who was sentenced to death for treason in 1546. “As a Black woman, I can understand being marginalized. I have a lived experience of what limitation and marginalization feel like,” Turner-Smith told the New York Times. “I thought it was interesting to bring the freshness of a Black body telling that story.”

The series focuses on Boleyn's final months, after she falls out of her husband's favor. The three-episode series will premiere in the U.S. at some point in 2021, and makes the perfect follow-up to The Spanish Princess, about Henry VIII's first wife.

She once appeared in a music video with Kanye West—and has a funny story about it.

You can briefly spot Turner-Smith in the 2009 music video for The-Dream's "Walkin' On The Moon," featuring Kanye West.

On an appearance of the Graham Norton Show, Turner-Smith revealed the unusual story behind her casting. She thought she was arriving for a meeting with the producer Hype Williams in L.A., and ended up walking onto set for the music video.

"Me and Kanye are supposed to be walking through like, this tunnel thing," Jodie said. "And he's holding my hand and he keeps shouting at me, 'You need to look more scared!' And I was like, 'I'm sh*tting myself!"

Turner-Smith is originally from the U.K.

She was raised in a family of Jamaican immigrants in her hometown of Peterborough, which Turner-Smith explained is just two hours outside of London. She eventually moved to the states and went to high school in Gaithersburg, Maryland where she was voted "most-likely to succeed."

"I am grateful for the girl in these photos and for every part of this journey," she wrote in a lengthy caption underneath a throwback yearbook picture, "because i couldn’t be me, now, if i wasn’t first her, then. when you know what it feels like to hate yourself, finally loving yourself is a freedom that cannot be matched by anyone else’s approval."

"I think of L.A. as my home now, in large part because I became the entity that I am in L.A.," she told Interview. "I always say to people that my coming-of-age happened in L.A., the unraveling of the person I was pretending to be for a long time, and then finding of the person I feel like I now am."