The actress and mother of two is continuing to be extremely open and vulnerable during her hit Facebook Watch series, 'Red Table Talk.'
Jada Pinkett Smith is continuing to be extremely open and vulnerable during her hit Facebook Watch series, Red Table Talk.
Monday's new episode features Jada and husband Will Smith's son, 19-year-old Jaden Smith, as well as the show's recurring guests, their 17-year-old daughter, Willow Smith, and Jada's mother, Adrienne Banfield-Jones. During the chat, Willow and Jaden bluntly open up about being raised by Will and Jada, and share some of the issues they've had to deal with in their famous family. Willow candidly tells Jada that she was upset with the way she and Will handled her after the success of her 2010 hit, "Whip My Hair."
"I only have one terrible experience, which is 'Whip My Hair,'" Willow says when asked about the times she had difficulty connecting to her parents. "Just that the values of the people around me should have been the opposite. You and daddy should have been like, 'OK, we value her musical growth and knowledge more than her popularity.'"
"Not just so much about a hit record," Jaden adds, noting that he went through a similar struggle after starring in 2010's The Karate Kid.
Jada explains that her and Will's attitude came from their own drastically different childhoods, where they had to fight for everything. The actress says she grew up in a violent neighborhood and also used to sell drugs, and that Will also grew up with a "lot of abuse."
"For us [it's] that survival mentality," the 46-year-old actress notes. "Your dad and I, we were like, 'Oh man, she'll be set up for life, this is her start.'"
"Make them a freaking workaholic soldier so that they can always take care of themselves," Jaden chimes in of his parents' mindset.
Willow then recalls shockingly shaving her head in 2012 at just 11 years old.
"It had everything to do with it," Willow says of her post-fame struggle. "It's funny, there's a Nirvana lyric that says, 'I shaved my head and then I'm not sad.'"
Jada later breaks down while acknowledging her possible shortcomings as a parent.
"You know what? I think parents have to give themselves much more forgiveness," she says, fighting tears. "When you become a parent, you have these huge ideals, even for yourself, because we all are coming into parenting with our own childhood traumas. And you're hoping you can fix all that through your own rearing of your children, and you can't. Your kids are gonna have their burdens. And even though I see how it might have hurt you, it's what I knew."
On a lighter note, the group also share some laughs while discussing Willow and Jaden's unconventional childhood, specifically, when Adrienne bluntly tells Jada that she believes Will and her gave their kids too much freedom growing up.
"We didn't give kids a whole lot of choice," Adrienne notes of her drastically different parenting style. "I felt like you guys had too much say over your own lives. And your mom and dad had to really kind of break me out of that because she treated you guys like adults. And I just felt like, 'He's eight. He's gonna tell me what time he's going to bed?!'"
Jada later recalls Jaden making the decision to move out at just 15 years old, and also the headlines he made when he was photographed wearing skirts. Jaden was later signed to Louis Vuitton Women in 2016, wearing a skirt in the famous ad.
"Do you understand, being a black, young man, and the son of like, an uber masculine ... he had his feelings on that for sure," Jada says with a laugh, recalling Will's reaction. "I remember Will called me like, 'Have you talked about this with Jaden and him wearing a skirt?' I said, 'Yeah, I have.'"
Jaden jokes that, aside from wanting to give other kids the freedom to think outside of the box and to not be bullied for it, he also wore women's clothing for pure style reasons.
"That comes along with it, but like, I wore the skirt so I could look fly," he says. "That's why I wore the skirt, so that everyone would say, 'He's an innovator. His head's in a different place.'"
Red Table Talk's latest episode is available now on Facebook Watch. Check out new episodes on Mondays and visit Red Table Talk on Wednesdays for a Facebook Live with Jada, Willow and Adrienne.
In a Red Table Talk episode last month, Willow revealed that she used to cut her wrists.
“I would have to say I honestly feel like I lost my sanity at one point,” Willow said of her difficult time after skyrocketing to fame in 2010. “After the tour and the promotion and all of that ... they wanted me to finish my album. And I was like, 'I’m not gonna do that.' After all of that kind of settled down, and it was like, a lull, I was listening to a lot of dark music and it was just so crazy. I was just plunged into this black hole and I was, like, cutting myself and doing crazy things.”
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