‘A lot happened’: Serayah gets real on Jacob Latimore split and why clairty is key in relationships

The couple dated for three years before splitting in 2023, but Serayah says they had a strong friendship before things took a different turn.

Actress/singer Serayah has seen both sides of a public relationship, whether it be her present relationship with rapper Joey Bada$$ or her past relationship with actor/singer Jacob Latimore. As (Cancer) season gets into full swing, Serayah was asked by Jason Lee for “The Jason Lee Show” about how she navigates public relationships and why things with Latimore went south.

“A lot happened,” Serayah said with a laugh. “We were together for maybe three or four years and throughout that time I was getting closer to 30 and I was like, ‘What are we doing?’ He said, ‘We’re chilling.’ And I was like, ‘Oh no, I don’t wanna just chill.'”

The couple first met af the 2016 BET Awards, where Lattimore knew who Serayah was thanks to her time on “Empire.” Although the pair kept their relationship private, it soon became public as they expressed their initial thoughts about one another on BET’s “Millennial Love Stories” series in 2022.

“We wasn’t trying to push that we’re dating,” Latimore said at the time.

Serayah added, “We just wanted to make sure things were real.”

Now, years later, the actress is looking back at things differently with Latimore and how it ended, and why she felt things needed to progress.

“In hindsight, it was just me growing and wanting my partner to express more commitment-wise,” she told Lee. “I do know we had a great friendship … it just expired. Here’s the thing for me, men can tend to ask for a lot without giving any type of security. Once your prefrontal lobe clicks on at 25, I feel like, as a woman, you’re like, ‘Wait, what are we doing here? Cause I’m not playing house, let’s be honest.”

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Even as Lee projected that Latimore’s astrological sign of Leo had something to do with the two splitting up, Serayah steered it back to ultimately what she wanted from a partner, something she believes she’s found in the father of her child.

“It was always very clear on what I’m doing and what I want, and when things aren’t starting to feel right, I gotta communicate it,” she said. “And if we’re not on the same page, then I need to exit.”

Last May, she and Joey sparked engagement rumors with photos of her flashing a rock on her finger as she navigated life after giving birth to their child in 2025.

“My fiancé has held it DOWN you hear me ! Through and through that’s a good man Savannah,” she wrote of Joey last July as she let fans in on a glimpse of her life in the present. In a joint interview for Essence, Joey recalled the first time he met Serayah and how he was immediately smitten.

“I saw her and I remember thinking to myself like, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen a woman so beautiful,'” he said. “She was just strikingly gorgeous, and her aura was just kind of radiating.”

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