Category: Jada Pinkett Smith

Jada Pinkett Smith is still hawking her memoir, Worthy. She recently chatted with the Daily Mail’s You Magazine about the book and, as always, the 2022 Oscar Slap. Real talk: while I think Jada would have always written her memoir, I think the Oscar Slap ended up reintroducing Jada to multiple audiences, and she decided to push forward with the memoir immediately after that. In this interview, she talks about how the slap saved her marriage and of course the Mail also name-checks Prince Harry. Some highlights:

The Oscar Slap helped her marriage: ‘I nearly didn’t even attend the Oscars that year, but I’m glad I did. I call it the “holy slap” now because so many positive things came after it. That moment of the s*** hitting the fan is when you see where you really are. After all those years trying to figure out if I would leave Will’s side, it took that slap for me to see I will never leave him. Who knows where our relationship would be if that hadn’t happened?’

Psychedelics saved her life: In his memoir, Spare, Prince Harry described taking ‘psychedelics’ and in an interview said they were ‘fundamental’ to helping him deal with ‘the traumas of the past’. The Smith family home is an hour away from Harry and Meghan’s in Montecito. Are they the friends she does it with? ‘No, but I didn’t know they did that. Good for them!’ To be fair, there is no suggestion Meghan has tried them.

On Britney Spears’ memoir: ‘I think Britney’s story and my story speak to people because women want to define themselves on their own terms, not just in relation to men. Why do you think I bought myself a “woman cave”? Every woman needs a woman cave!’

How her kids reacted to her buying a separate home: ‘They knew I needed it. And besides, they are adults now. They know where to find me. They all have their own keys – even Will.’

Whether fame & money are awful: ‘They’re not awful but our perceptions of what they can deliver are unrealistic. I mean, kale can be disastrous if it’s all you eat, but it’s also good stuff. We just need to amend what wealth and celebrity mean for the soul.’

[From The Daily Mail]

While I could take or leave Jada for the most part, the most I’ve ever liked her is when she’s talking about how much she loves living alone, in her own space, which she decorated herself. She sounds so happy now that she’s gotten physical distance from Will and it ended up strengthening their marriage in some way. As for the Oscar Slap making her realize that she’s ride-or-die for Will… I mean, I get why she feels that way, even if it’s perfectly clear that they really should divorce. It’s none of my business – except Jada is trying to make it our business – but I genuinely think Jada and Will would probably be happier if they just divorced.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Jada Pinkett Smith gave a lengthy interview to the New York Times this weekend to promote her memoir, Worthy. The NYT’s piece was actually quite thoughtful and they didn’t tabloidize some of the darker elements of Jada’s life, which is sort of what happened with her People Magazine cover story. Jada’s in full promotional mode and she has talking points, which is why some of the quotes sound familiar – she’d already said the same stuff to Today and People. Still, I enjoyed reading a more in-depth piece with Jada. Some highlights:

When Will Smith called her his “wife” at the 2022 Oscars: “Even though we hadn’t been calling each other husband and wife in a long time, I said, ‘I’m his wife now. We in this.’ That’s just who I am. That’s the gift I have to offer, like, ‘Hey, I’m riding with you.’”

Smith and Rock had decades of disrespect between them, starting in the late 1980s: “I didn’t judge Chris, I didn’t judge Will. I was like, ‘Oh, this is a spiritual clash.’”

Why she stood by Will that night: He was in tremendous pain, and fragile, Pinkett Smith said. He had recently finished filming “Emancipation,” a hellish Civil War-era drama that was psychologically tormenting for Smith, who plays an enslaved man. “I knew in my heart that he needed me by his side more than ever.”

Her reaction – to roll her eyes – at Chris Rock’s joke: “It was easy to spin the story of how the perfect Hollywood megastar had fallen to his demise because of his imperfect wife. Blaming the woman is nothing new…How is it that a woman can be so irrelevant and culpable at the same time? I had to think about the narrative out there of me as the adulterous wife, who had now driven her husband to madness with the command of one look. I had to take responsibility for my part in aiding that false narrative’s existence. I also had to chuckle at the idea that the world would think I wielded that amount of control over Will Smith. If I had that amount of control over Will, chile, my life would have been entirely different these damn near three decades. Real talk!”

The state of her marriage: They are not in an open marriage, nor are they uncoupled, polyamorous or divorced. They are something else altogether: life partners in family and business, long maintaining an agreement they call “a relationship of transparency.” In recent years, they’ve lived separately. As a 50th birthday present to herself, she bought her own place, moving out of their Calabasas compound….Pinkett Smith, in pursuit of “clarity and emotional sobriety,” became what she calls an “urban nun of sorts.” She meditates and reads texts like the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran or the Bible daily, and abstains from sex, alcohol, violent entertainment and unnecessary spending.

On Tupac: “Pac’s whole thing was because I knew him when — when he wasn’t Tupac. The guy who was poor, the conditions that he lived in. And I was rocking with him anyway.” In “Worthy,” she reveals that he’d proposed to her in a letter while incarcerated at Rikers in the mid-1990s for groping a fan. “Did Pac love me? Yeah he loved me! But I promise you, had we got married, he’d have divorced my ass as soon as he walked through them damn gates and got out.”

[From The NY Times]

Jada’s description of her life now is kind of the dream, right? She’s still married, she still has some kind of love for and partnership with Will, but she has carved out her own space, her own home, her own rules for existing and healing. I get that there’s some outrage at Will and Jada for “lying” about their marriage, but my view is that they’ve both always been pretty open about the fact that their marriage has struggled a lot in the past decade or longer, but it’s also clear that they still love each other. They don’t have to define it, especially since they’re still figuring out their sh-t. Now, if I was in charge of their lives? Sure, I would tell them to just get divorced, get things settled and then continue to be friends and continue to love each other. But they’ve got their own thing.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

People have successfully blocked this out of their memory banks, but for months in the fall of 2021, Will Smith was promoting his memoir and it felt like every single day for two solid months, there was some crazy headline about Will – like, having sex was triggering his gag reflex, or ridiculously personal stuff about his marriage. People forgot all about that when he slapped Chris Rock. Now, two years later, Jada has written her own memoir and we’re going through the same thing – every day is a new headline about Will, Chris Rock or Tupac. Well, we heard previously that Jada and Will had been separated for six years before the 2022 Oscars, and now Jada is saying that she was shocked that Will referred to Jada as “my wife” when he screamed at Rock on stage:

Will Smith shocked America when he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars and uttered a now infamous sentence in defense of Jada Pinkett Smith: “Keep my wife’s name out of your f–king mouth.”

But Jada was surprised for a different reason, as Will had not called her his “wife” for a while before that.

“First of all, I’m really shocked, because mind you, I’m not there. We haven’t called each other husband and wife in a long time,” Jada told Hoda Kotb in an NBC News primetime special while promoting her upcoming memoir, “Worthy,” out Oct. 17. “I’m like, ‘What is going on right now? Keep my wife’s name out of your mouth?’ I’m really worried for Will because I don’t know what’s going on.”

At the 2022 Oscars, Will stormed the stage and struck Rock after the comedian made a joke about Jada’s bald head. Jada, who has alopecia, rolled her eyes after Rock jokingly referred to her as G.I. Jane.

“I did that eye roll not so much for me — and I think this is really important — but the fact that there could be a jab at alopecia,” Jada told Kotb in a new clip.

[From Variety]

I’m not with Jada on this one – even though they were separated, they were still “together” at public events and Will had literally been referring to Jada as his wife for months as he promoted his memoir and King Richard. Why would Jada suddenly be shocked by that? Besides, it’s also clear that Chris, Jada and Will have some incredibly complicated history, history which included Will and Chris having words years prior to that night, all about Will’s “wife.”

Meanwhile, Jada also shared her feelings on Rock’s Netflix special, which aired earlier this year. That was where Rock called Jada a “bitch” a dozen times and blamed the slap on her, and claimed that Jada “started it.” This was Jada’s reaction:

“I remember my heart piercing, my heart cracking, and I remember my feelings being so hurt,” Jada told the outlet.

“And then I remember being able to smile and wish him well at the same time,” she continued.

[From People]

For someone who talks the language of healing, therapy, ownership and mindfulness, it’s surprising to hear Jada soften her language around Rock consistently. I get it, the last thing she wants to do is come across like “an Angry Black Woman,” but meeting each one of Rock’s escalating humiliations with forced grace is just a strange way to exist. Like, this is the moment (when she’s truly telling her side of things) to actually say “that was really awful, he hurt me and it’s not okay and I don’t have any interest in dealing with his sh-t anymore.” She’s overemphasizing that his humiliations are like water off a duck’s back.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.