Jada Pinkett Smith is dropping truth bombs in her memoir.
“I didn’t write the book to set any record straight,” the actress/producer/singer/talk show host tells Yahoo Entertainment. But she does nonetheless on topics including her marriage to Will Smith and their secret separation, the Oscars slap drama involving Chris Rock, Tupac Shakur’s prison marriage proposal and so much more.
In the larger picture, Worthy is about Pinkett Smith’s journey to loving herself, which is something she’s struggled with despite seemingly “having it all.” The book starts in her Baltimore days as she largely raised herself as her young parents divorced and battled addiction. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition as she pursued the performing arts as a teenager while also selling crack cocaine, finding herself with a gun to her head more than once. She credits her street miseducation for helping her navigate Hollywood, having early and ongoing career success in a long list of movies including Set It Off, Jason’s Lyric, The Nutty Professor, Scream 2, The Matrix Reloaded and Girls Trip. She fell for the Fresh Prince, with whom she built a family and empire. But while her life looked great on paper, she long struggled with her mental health — and her marriage wasn’t a fairytale.
“I felt like I’ve been through the gauntlet,” Pinkett Smith, 52, says of her decision to share her story. “I’m like: What else can anybody say about you? Just give the honesty of your journey. Hopefully it’ll help other people who are on their journey to self-worth to be seen in a certain way that can be hopeful in times that people can feel hopeless.”
So, yes, the Smiths have been separated — since 2016.
Pinkett Smith goes deep into their relationship timeline, from Smith calling her while he was still married to Sheree Zampino to how they’ve been living apart for seven years. While they’ve both admitted to relationships outside their marriage (her “entanglement” with August Alsina; his admission of unfaithfulness), they never had an open relationship, but call it a “relationship of transparency,” agreeing to work through any hiccups. Their current separation wasn’t the first. They view themselves as “life partners” with family the cornerstone. Pinkett Smith points to a conversation she had with Smith right before their 1997 wedding, when he brought up the topic of a prenup and she told him there was no reason for one because they would never split. That’s a vow she’s taken to heart. She’s never contacted a divorce lawyer.
Their current status? “Oh, we’re just in a really beautiful place,” Pinkett Smith tells us. “It’s like, wow, what a journey. Two babies who thought they were adults coming into such a big life and what we’ve had to struggle through and grow through together. So we’re in a really beautiful place.”
That place has them living apart, which has been the case for some time.
“I still have my own space,” confirms Pinkett Smith, who lived in her mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris’s guest room for a period before buying her own home as a 50th birthday gift to herself. “And I’ve been really enjoying that. We’ll see how long that lasts. As of now, I’m enjoying it.”
She says she had conversations with Smith about what she would be sharing about their relationship in the book and he read it before it was published. She notes that she gave all her family members — including their adult children (Jaden, Willow and bonus son Trey) and her mother Banfield-Norris — that courtesy.
Pinkett Smith on being “the villain” after the 2022 Oscars slap drama.
She doesn’t skimp on Oscars drama either. She was surprised Smith invited her as his plus-one amid their separation. She wasn’t surprised when Rock came out and made her the target of a joke. The backstory is that Rock and Smith have beef dating back to the ’80s. Rock came for Pinkett Smith in 2016 over her #OscarsSoWhite comments. Rock also asked her out, it’s unclear when, when he heard she’d split from Smith.
So when Rock came out to present, Pinkett Smith expected a joke at her expense. While she was bothered it was about her hair when she has alopecia — due to the psychological impact the disease has on people — she had no part in what transpired. She may have rolled her eyes, but didn’t nudge or otherwise urge Smith to do what he did. She was processing the events like everyone else. At first she thought it was a bit. She was also internally reacting to Smith referring to her as “my wife” when they hadn’t used wife/husband in years amid their split.
In the aftermath, a narrative that grew was that Pinkett Smith was somehow to blame for Smith going ballistic. In the book she writes about how “when a man, any man, commits a displeasing act, how bizarre it is that a woman can be fully to blame. How is it that a woman can be so irrelevant and culpable at the same time? It’s absolutely mind-boggling…”
“I became the villain,” she tells us of the Oscars drama, which resulted in Smith — who won Best Actor for King Richard — being banned from the ceremony for a decade.
“The one thing that I’ve learned in [life is] there are no ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys,'” she continues. “We’re all wounded people and we commit acts [while] trying to figure out how to be less hurt. And sometimes those actions that we commit to be less hurt create more hurt. But it doesn’t make you a bad person.”
Plus, “The public [is] always looking for the villain,” she says, especially when it’s a woman. “Basically the myth of a woman is that she’s the downfall of humanity, so blame her. She’s the one. And that couldn’t be more far from the truth.”
Pinkett Smith says that she really wrote her book “for women. I feel like our journeys are still so taboo and I think that we don’t feel that we have the right to tell the depth and the truth of our stories because women are always so judged and criticized if we’re not living up to the social idea of what a woman is supposed to be — whether it’s through the patriarchal lens or even the matriarchal lens.”
She says Tupac Shakur would have “divorced my ass” had they actually married.
Pinkett Smith has spoken about her deep friendship with the late rapper, but she lays it all out in Worthy. They were teen classmates at their Baltimore performing arts school, and their mothers both dealt with addiction, bonding them. They shared a kiss early on, but there were no sparks and grew their friendship instead. She supported him through his sex abuse conviction, traveling to Rikers Island to visit him. During his eight-month stint in prison, he proposed to her.
What would have happened had she said yes? “Oh my god — it would have been a mess,” she laughs. “I knew Pac so well and I knew what he was in search [of]. He didn’t want me as his wife. He needed a tether. He needed somebody to help him get through his time. I was going to do that regardless. He was just in an extreme place. But we would have gotten married and he would have divorced my ass as soon as he walked through those damn gates and got his freedom.”
She says she actually considered it, until he said conjugal visits would be part of it.
“I was like: Wait a minute. You know a kiss doesn’t work. What are you talking about? Because I was thinking … I can do the psychological wife. But wait, man, hold up — a physical wife too?! Oh, brother you know damn well that we don’t even mix like that,” she laughs, adding, “We got through that little patch.”
Pinkett Smith kept the letters the late rapper wrote her through the years, using them word for word in the book as she revisited that time in her life.
As for the recent development of Duane “Keffe D” Davis being arrested in Shakur’s 1996 murder, she says, “I know that the gentleman who’s pretty much always said he was in the car has been brought in. And I’m just hoping that we’re gonna get more answers. I’m hoping we’re gonna get more answers.”
“It was really important to share the depth of my mental health struggles.”
A big part of her story is how she struggled with her mental health from very early on. Prior to getting together with Smith, she had a breakdown and was treated for depression and suicidal ideation. Once she started dating Smith, she stopped taking her medication, Prozac, because it was like the Independence Day actor became the drug for her. And while she had cars, jewelry, houses and a picture-perfect family, she struggled through their marriage trying to find inner happiness. By the time she was 40 — which was when her relationship with Smith really started to unravel — she felt broken inside. She thought about ending her life. She was later diagnosed with complex trauma with PTSD and dissociation. She writes about how plant medicine, specifically the psychedelic drug ayahuasca, was part of her breakthrough in finding relief from the suicidal thoughts.
“That was another reason I felt like it was really important to share the depth of my mental health struggles: Because on the outside, everything looked perfect,” she says. “You would think: You have everything you need for happiness. It took me a long time to realize that there was a flaw in that idea. I believed what everybody else thought: Something’s even more wrong with me because I have all these things and I’m not happy. That was just another hot cup of shame. It took me a long time to even recognize and be willing to let go of the false idea that things outside of yourself, material things — a marriage, children — can make you happy if you don’t have your own sense of happiness within.”
She’s now on this deep spiritual journey. She studies a variety of religions and goes to therapy. She abstains from alcohol, sex and frivolous spending. She’s traveled far and wide to meet monks and reads about mystics. She’s religious to her morning, afternoon and evening practices — “just staying connected to that heart space.” She and Smith — as well as other members of their family — have since participated in ayahuasca ceremonies. It’s an ongoing process of self-discovery.
“That idea that you’ve arrived somewhere — like you have experiences and you’re like: I’ve arrived. Life only shows me on a consistent basis: You never arrive,” she says. “We’re here to continuously grow and learn and expand. That’s what life’s about. It’s not about landing at an arrival point.”
Pinkett Smith clears up other rumors in the book, but “didn’t write the book to set any record straight.”
The book is over 400 pages long and while readers still will have questions about her marriage to Smith (trust us), she does chip away at other rumors. For instance, she writes about studying Scientology and says her father went through one of the organization’s addiction programs. (She had no intention of joining, drawing the the line “several times.”) She also addresses rumors she’s gay. (She experimented, but likes men.)
“I was like, OK, if I were picking up a book about Jada and she didn’t address these things, how would I feel?” she said of addressing all the rumors. “I’d feel like this is not an up-and-up book. So I felt like: Look, if you’re gonna write, write. If you’re gonna share your journey, share your journey.”
Does she think this will silence the gossip about her that has been swirling forever?
“That’s a good question. I really hope that people will find themselves more interesting. You know what I mean? And just go on that journey,” she says. “But I didn’t write the book to set any record straight. I really didn’t. So for anyone that wants to move on, great — and anybody who doesn’t, that’s OK, too. I really wrote the book for people who are interested in their own journey — and then whatever anybody else wants to do with it, they’re gonna do whatever they want with it, and that’s fine too. All of it is part of the plan. I accept it and embrace it all.”
She’s bringing back Red Table Talk — in 2024.
As for what’s next on her professional journey, in addition to continuing as business partners with Smith in their Westbrook Inc., multimedia and entertainment venture company, there will be more Red Table Talk at a new home.
“Next year, we’re bringing Red Table Talk back,” she says of the show in which she, her mother and daughter had deep conversations and “real talk” about topic subjects with experts and celebrity guests. The show was canceled earlier this year by Facebook Watch after five years.
“I really needed this time,” she says. “I couldn’t write the book and do Red Table at the same time. And Willow needed time to get out in the world with her music. We needed some downtime. I’m really happy we’ve had that. But, yeah, we are right now in the talks. I can’t really talk about it yet, but we’re planning on coming back next year.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, call 911, or call the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
Worthy is available in bookstores now.
