Jada Pinkett-Smith on prejudice, typecasting and the fallout from that slap

Jada Pinkett Smith plays many roles in a day. She’s an actor, a mum, a wife. Once the frontwoman of a metal band called Wicked Wisdom, she is also a soon-to-be memoirist – as well as, to some, an almost pathological over-sharer on Red Table Talk, the Facebook Watch chatshow she co-hosts with her daughter Willow and her mother Adrienne “Gammy” Banfield-Norris.

But Pinkett Smith isn’t entirely comfortable with the reputation she has acquired: a honey-voiced, wise woman who never seems ruffled or fazed – a “level five auntie” as someone on social media put it. “Well, it’s interesting,” she says, speaking from her Los Angeles office. “I don’t really look at it that way. But I do think that, as we get older, that’s how it should be.” She laughs and soon I’m on the receiving end of one of her classic soothing declarations. It feels like a cross between a sermon and a guided meditation.

By the time you’re her age – she’s 51 – you have found your zen state. “You’ve been through enough trials and challenges.” The energy of your youth has mellowed, she adds, in a nod to 22-year-old Willow. “I see my younger self in her. She’s so fiery, so ready to go. Ready to take on the world.” She laughs again. “Then, as you get older, you don’t hold on to that stage. You pass the torch and settle into your new understanding.” That is how you become a level five auntie.

Pinkett Smith sounds this reflective while promoting her new Netflix docuseries African Queens, which she narrates and executive-produced. Each season will focus on a different royal, looking to plug the major knowledge gaps in African history for people who grow up outside the continent. Pinkett Smith is in her element, using the life-and-death peril of the show’s protagonist, Queen Njinga of what became Angola, to muse on the human experience. I start to feel as though I’m listening to a podcast hosted by a therapist.

Although Pinkett Smith is radically open on Red Table Talk, she is firmly in promotion mode today. A publicist interrupts when our chat veers away from the show, while The Slap is most definitely off the table. In case you somehow missed it, that was the shocking moment at last year’s Oscars when Pinkett Smith’s husband Will Smith struck Chris Rock after the ceremony’s host made a joke at her expense.

I get the sense she only speaks publicly about private issues on her terms. Sure, she’ll broadcast intimate details of her marriage to millions on Facebook, such as hating her own wedding day, not to mention her near-addiction to masturbating several times daily. But today, she sidesteps anything that could cause a stir.

To understand the person behind the headlines, you have to go back. Then her stoicism, in the face of constant tabloid frenzies, begins to make sense. She started out as a young dancer and actor, breaking out with a recurring role on Cosby Show spin-off A Different World in the early 1990s. Then, aged 21, she met Will, though they didn’t date for a few years. She turned to film, crossing over from Black classics such as Set It Off and The Nutty Professor to her early 2000s stint as Niobe in The Matrix sequels.

Navigating the industry as a Black woman came with its own challenges. “I was in a world where there hadn’t been a lot of learning about, or a lot of desire to understand, the Black experience. That’s a new thing. Now it’s politically correct: everybody’s got to understand each other or else it’s cancel culture.” Back then, when she was being told to wear her curly hair straight, or being typecast as the hip Black friend in films such as 2008 romcom The Women, she felt hemmed in. (cont.)

It looks like she's wearing one of those cheap smocks they use at the barber shop

Idiot writers love the word zen but have no inkling of its meaning.

Fuck her.

(cont.) Typically, she rose above it. But wasn’t it frustrating? Rather than answer directly, she invokes her maternal grandmother, who helped raise her. “In most Black families,” she says, “the women are the glue. They’re the matriarchs, the weavers of love, the leaders of spiritual knowledge within our homes.” Her mum Gammy gave birth to Pinkett Smith while a teen, moving in and out of her own mother’s house while trying to get her head around motherhood and dealing with a decades-long drug addiction. She’s well now.

Pinkett Smith’s grandma taught her that “there was nothing to gain from retaliation. There was nothing to gain from becoming the thing that was causing us pain.” Essentially, she was brought up to dust herself off. “Martin Luther King Jr’s whole idea was: ‘Look, the only way to combat misunderstandings is through love.’ Call that misunderstanding whatever you want: racism, prejudice, whatever. Sometimes, it’s not even prejudice but just ignorance.”

A beat. “Sometimes it is racism too,” she adds. “But the only way you can cure it is by putting love on it. And I had to learn that.” I can’t imagine the civil rights leader would have defined Jim Crow laws and their de facto state-sanctioned violence as only a misunderstanding, but her point stands: she faces negativity with compassion.

How much did her upbringing feel different from that of her white peers, then? “Oh, very different,” she says, her voice lowering to a purr. “And learning how to respect those differences, even if my difference wasn’t respected – that really is my grandmother’s teaching, right? She wanted me to be able to walk in any world, with anyone, and relate – no matter if they understood me or not.” She won’t add any more, and swiftly returns to a soundbite about Queen Njinga fighting off the Portuguese colonial mission.

I play ball, relating my questions to the show’s content. Njinga negotiated with the greedy Europeans, I say, then ask how Pinkett Smith handled tough situations in her own career. What did it mean to put her grandma’s wise words into practice, being dragged through gossip columns as she has been? “I think every woman has to find her own solutions,” she says. Care to share one?

She pauses, then goes on. “Even something as simple as coming into the game at such a young age, and how I had to navigate the necessity to be ‘less Black’. How do you navigate people being threatened by your Blackness? Having to really not take it personally and understanding: ‘OK, this is the land I’m in right now. How do I navigate this without allowing their discomfort with my Blackness to get on me?’ That’s a hell of a thing to navigate.”

Just about every actor in her peer group would have a similar story, she says. “It’s something that can either make you bitter” – she smacks her lips – “or it’s something you can look at, not take personally, then push against.” Women did it in their own ways, she begins, listing off names from Halle Berry and Nia Long to Gabrielle Union and Set It Off co-star Queen Latifah.

“We all had to figure out … ” She falters then starts again. “There are always those compromises you make that you hope don’t totally pull you away from your roots. That’s the difference between being confused, or being swallowed by becoming someone else to get what you need. It’s about being clear who you are.” (cont.)

(cont.) For her, that has meant approaching marriage and motherhood in unconventional ways. When Willow and her brother Jaden were teens, they were painted in the press as weird, sheltered rich kids with little grasp of reality , the result of a joint 2014 New York Times interview and Jaden’s stream-of-consciousness tweets.

Pinkett Smith and Will dedicated two Red Table Talk episodes to their marriage in the show’s first season, spanning Will falling in love with Pinkett Smith while still married and the breaking point that made them separate after her 40th birthday. She was then mocked in 2020 for calling a romantic relationship she had with musician August Alsina an “entanglement” rather than an affair. And then, with the slap, her husband flung their marriage back under the spotlight.

While commentators frothed at the mouth, the slap made Pinkett Smith’s alopecia diagnosis and hair loss a watercooler topic (she had first mentioned them on Red Table Talk in 2018 and later on Instagram). What did she learn from having her autoimmune illness folded into a global scandal? The publicist cuts in, but Pinkett Smith takes a long breath and speaks anyway. “I learned a lot about detachment. And I learned a deeper beauty within myself, being able to let my hair go.” Her voice is so quiet that I strain to hear her.

Her diagnosis has been “a great teacher. It’s been a hard one, a scary one – because specifically as Black women, we identify so much of ourselves with our hair. And it was scary. I had to really dig deep and see the beauty of myself beyond my aesthetics.” It’s the most direct she’s sounded. And that’s as far as she’ll go – but she can’t resist leaving me with some gentle, sage advice.

“How old are you?” she says. When I respond, she labels me “still very young. So when you think about how people get a little older, and say what they need to say without a filter – they’ve earned that. When you get to my age, you get so settled in your skin, so comfortable in the knowingness of you, that you don’t get concerned about what other people have to say. The elders earn that.”

Baldie egged on her simpleton husband to do what he did.

We have so much to learn from Jada Pinkett-Smith!

About loving and family and aging, but most of all, about... ourselves.

Datalounge: At Least One Post Shitting All Over A Black Actress Posted Every 30 Minutes, Or Your Money Back!

Yep, call me racist, call me misogynist. I can't stand this sanctimonious bitch.

Can this stupid self-loathing dyke just die already?!

Bald headed bitch needs to fuck off.

fuck this angry, self-promoting cunt. she and her whole family may have all the money in the world - but when it comes to class, they are poverty stricken.

[quote]By the time you’re her age – she’s 51 – you have found your zen state. “You’ve been through enough trials and challenges.”

I can't tell if this writer is an actual idiot or if she's making fun of Pinkett-Smith for being so narcissistic and self-important.

Is she still sucking off her son's best friend?

Funny that Jada has been involved in two unrelated Oscar controversies: the #OscarSoWhite boycott and The Slap.

And yet she will never be nominated for one.

The author has brought us many incisive journalistic treasures.

She needs to blast off to the v-ger pod like the other bald chick.

Jada's demise. I'm here for it.

[quote]But Pinkett Smith isn’t entirely comfortable with the reputation she has acquired: a honey-voiced, wise woman who never seems ruffled or fazed

This bitch is insane.

I hope the headline for this article is: "Jada Pinkett-Smith: How My Ego Ruined My Husband's Career"

"Khadijah don't need ya."

With Will banned from attending the Oscars for 10 years, it would be hilarious if Jada showed up with someone else!

Cuck!

I like the daughter, Willow. I think she's a talented singer/frontwoman for her band.

I'm done shitting on the family. The slap revealed so much about those two that there's nothing left to add. They have to live with the changed public perception and that seems punishment enough.

(I just started taking cbd oil and that might account for this mellow mood ;)

Bad actress with spoiled children and henpecked husband complains about life even though hubby has half a billion dollars.

Surely, there is someone out there who cares. It just isn't me. I'd watch her show if each episode was five minutes long and she wasn't on it.

She is shady af. Was known to be that way before she latched on to Will.

Nobody gives a flying fuck what this horrible human being or her husband have to say or are doing. Just go away and die already.

What a load of personality-disordered word salad. Was hoping after "the slap" these two would be relegated to the shadows, but no such luck apparently.

[quote] Datalounge: At Least One Post Shitting All Over A Black Actress Posted Every 30 Minutes, Or Your Money Back!

Yeah, because nobody's ever taken on Cate Blanchett, Goop, Madonna, Julia Roberts, Florence Pugh and Meryl Streep here.

And Barbra Streisand.

Why does this woman warrant an article in The Guardian? The Slap was last year’s news.

This site really hates black people.

This site really hates all kinds of people. Jada and Viola are not all Black people.

Jada is a mediocre never-was actress. If she hadn't married Will Smith we wouldn't have heard anything about her for 20 years.

Her alopecia is the result of tight weaves and dyeing her hair in harsh colors. Not from disease or stress or anything like that. She just abused her hair and wanted people to feel bad for her ass.

JPS and Markle visit the Bass Pro Pyramid together.

See, that’s a show right there.

I'll say something nice. She looks great.

She is insufferable.

She's a level-five cuntie!

R11, she is sanctimonious. I used to like the edginess of their relationship but they are full blown hypocrites. Your husband slap the shit out of the host on live TV and you are quiting Martin Luther King Jr. Get the fuck outta here. Do she possess any self awareness or humility.

r37 No one figured she had alopecia because she used to rock that same hairstyle, quite well too, back in the 90s. Have you all never seen the opening scene of Scream 2. And that was NOT alopecia back then, it was her style.

Trash.

Quoting* MLK

We really don't like her.

This cunt does not have alopecia, why isn’t anyone calling her out on yet another lie?

She is rich and I am poor. Her husband bitch slapped Chris Rock. Goodbye.

God I hate her

[quote] Nobody gives a flying fuck what this horrible human being or her husband have to say or are doing.

You could just ignore the thread.

Or would be clicking be too difficult for you to manage?

#guardiansobald

[quote]I ain't bovered about it like you little people! I'm on the Zen Bridge to OT9!

If you have a 5 o’clock shadow, it is not alopecia

Willow Smith is a talentless entitled little cunt who has been relentlessly coddled and promoted by her asshole parents.

The article is a bore because she is a bore.

I am intrigued by the African Queens show, however

Shes one of those people that talks a lot but doesn’t really say anything.

R46 She does have alopecia but I think it's the kind caused by hair care and harsh treatments, not the genetic more severe alopecia.

R53 Willow Smith is actually insanely talented, musically. Her parents are just cunts.

“I wasn’t driving. The black kid was.”

woops, that was for the Lilo thread.

I haven’t forgiven her even if her face is partially repaired.

She has always struck me as someone with intense inner anger

R60 A prune danish might solve many of her issues.

For the most part, it's out of my norm to wish ill on others. I take exception with this woman. Will comes off as a bit of a schmuck. Jada is responsible for the positive or negative that happens with these two. She has earned what she has received.

This bald ass bitch needs to SHUT THE FUCK UP

100% full of shit.

Fuck this bald shit stirring cuckolding cunt.

Thoughts and prayers for Jada Pinkett Smith .

I wonder how she's feeling NOW that the Chris Rock special aired. He tore them to shreds.

I'm sure her husband won't be able to hear the word bitch again without flashing back to Chris Rock's words for the rest of his life.

[quote]‘Sometimes it is racism’:

And sometimes, you're just such a huge, nasty, bitch that people hate you for a reason having nothing to do with anything but YOU.

WARNING - FuckFace Thread.

QUOTE - "But Pinkett Smith isn’t entirely comfortable with the reputation she has acquired: a honey-voiced, wise woman who never seems ruffled or fazed" - what a deluded indulgent cunt.

God I despise this bitch

Let’s not let bitch ass fake masculine punk Will off the hook here gentlemen. F him

[quote]I wonder how she's feeling NOW that the Chris Rock special aired. He tore them to shreds.

He didn't say anything 1000 others hadn't said before him. He went after Jada more than Will because he knows there are people who spend their entire day sitting around seething about every single thing she does, and that's who he panders to. That's the kind of person he's always pandered to, the person who thinks women are responsible for everything bad that happens. Like we're supposed to pretend Will Smith isn't an adult who made his own choices here.

Seinfeld’s mother describes my opinion to a t: „ I hate her like poison „

Dizzy cunt. She is beyond over.

Alopecia my arse!