By the time I talk to Jada Pinkett Smith, it’s a week before the release of her debut memoir and only a few hours after headlines blared with the news of her separation from Will Smith. She revealed in the book that she and Smith, whom she wed in 1997, have been separated since 2016.
Since the news dropped, Pinkett Smith has been the target of sexist vitriol — from the flood of posts claiming that she’s embarrassing Will Smith to others claiming that she’s not a great wife at all (ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith dedicated an entire video to this). Then, of course, that was followed by the constant misconceptions that she made Will Smith slap Chris Rock during the 2022 Oscars ceremony (in the book, she shares that she thought it was a skit). And now, yet another misconception has resurfaced: that the late rapper Tupac Shakur was the true romantic love of her life (she’s stated several times that there were only friends).
For the chattering social media horde, just speaking her truth is a problem. How dare a powerful woman share details about her marriage to an even more powerful man in a book about her life, they seem to say.
In “Worthy (Dey Street Books, $22.38),” her new memoir that was released on Oct. 17, the actress shares the tumultuous and triumphant journey she took to understanding that the opinions she has about herself are the ones that matter. Pinkett Smith will stop at Atlanta’s Buckhead Theatre on Monday to discuss the new book.
“There’s a lot going on in the world right now,” Pinkett Smith said when asked about the constant judgment. “There’s a lot of unhappiness. There’s a lot of uncertainty, and when you shake up people’s ideas of what is certain or you shake up people’s idea of what they want to be true, that can be upsetting, frustrating, but it doesn’t have anything to do with me. That has to do with wherever that person is sitting. Like these are people who don’t know me.”
The Jada Pinkett Smith that the world knows is the talented actress who got her start as the straight-talking and streetwise student Lena James on the hit show “A Different World.” Then there’s Jada Pinkett Smith aka Jada Koren, the rockstar who was the lead singer of the metal band Wicked Wisdom. And Jada Pinkett Smith, the talk show host/pseudo-life coach, whose “Red Table Talk” series was the breakout hit on the now-defunct Facebook Watch. Then there’s Jada Pinkett Smith, the mom and wife, whose longtime partnership with Will Smith has been branded as the epitome of #BlackLove online and in pop culture.
In “Worthy,” readers are introduced to a 40-year-old Jada Pinkett Smith who’s contemplating suicide and wrestling with her PTSD diagnosis. She paints a mortifying scene in which she’s determining which California cliff would make her suicide appear accidental. She’s adamant about choosing steeper cliffs, because she was scared that anything gentler than that would risk the chance of her surviving the crash. At the time, she didn’t feel worthy of living. “I was slammed by the reality that I’d been checking off boxes meant to define being enough to deserve ‘having it all’,” she writes.
Credit: Dey Street Books
Credit: Dey Street Books
Now, at 53, Pinkett Smith no longer has those suicidal thoughts. Arriving at that destination took years of unlearning the toxic messages she’d tell herself and embarking on a spiritual journey to healing that includes ayahuasca, the plant-based psychedelic drug.
“I might have a moment where I have to remind myself like, ‘Oh no, you’re not going to go into that negative thought,’ but it’s literally a moment, right? Because I really have worked so hard to transform that fundamental messaging of not being unlovable where I’m like, ‘Oh no, I’m lovable as hell and I’m worthy as hell, as well.’ And so in those quick moments of doubt, just going, ‘No, no, no, that’s the wrong. You’re moving in the wrong direction with your thought. Go back and see your inner kingdom, you know, to that place of self-worth.’”
“Worthy” also details how her grandma inspired her creativity and ferocious spirit, witnessing domestic abuse at a young age and navigating Hollywood. And yes, she shares her thoughts on the infamous night when Smith stormed the Oscars stage and hit Chris Rock after the comedian made a joke about Pinkett Smith having alopecia.
In Chapter 21, titled “The Holy Joke, the Holy Slap and Holy Lessons,” she reveals that she didn’t realize Smith had actually slapped Chris Rock until a few minutes after it happened. Nor did she realize that she’d be blamed for all of it: “It was easy to spin the story of how the perfect Hollywood megastar had fallen to his demise because of his imperfect wife,” she writes of that night, when Smith later won the Oscar for best actor for “King Richard.” “The patriarchy depends on pinning the downfall of humanity on poor Eve.”
But she was more surprised that Smith referred to her as his wife and that she was even attending the ceremony with him at all. The pair had been legally married but lived separate lives for years, and they’d even had a “falling out” before production for “King Richard” began. They eventually decided to pursue therapy again, so when Smith asked her to join him at the Oscars, she felt “that we weren’t ready to give everything up just yet. We still had an inexplicable connection, an attachment that didn’t want to let go, that couldn’t let go.”
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
Pinkett Smith reveals details about her partnership with Smith in a way that is often jarring. While some view Pinkett Smith as a chronic oversharer, she sees it as nothing but transparency. It’s her life, after all.
“You have to (share it),” she said. “That’s part of the journey. Me not talking about it would have been me not speaking fully around my journey. And I think that is probably one of the most important parts and also, these ideas of what healthy relationships look like and what a relationship should be .... There’s so many different ways to love, there’s so many different ways to be in partnership with people. Will and I are in a new chapter, and people just got to get with that.”
In “Worthy,” Pinkett Smith doesn’t just center herself. She affirms that we’re all on a healing journey together. Each chapter ends with a self-reflection prompt that allows readers to grapple with their own traumas that may be similar to what she’s faced.
“I’m just hoping that people who are on their journeys — even for someone like you — reading the book and maybe there’s some little breadcrumbs whether it’s like, ‘Oh, wow, I’m going to try that exercise’ or ‘oh man, that happened to me too.’ I can really relate to that. Just to help other people who are on the journey to be seen in a certain way and you know, maybe offer some oxygen in those places where people might feel a little hopeless.”
IF YOU GO
Jada Pinkett Smith: ‘Worthy’ book tour (in conversation with Fredricka Whitfield)
7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 23. $50. Buckhead Theatre, 3110 Roswell Road, Atlanta. 404-843-2825, thebuckheadtheatre.com.
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