Jada Pinkett Smith’s Memoir Tour About Will Smith Is Straining Her ‘Red Table Talk’ Image
16.10.2023 - 16:07
/ variety.com
Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic It may be time for Jada Pinkett Smith to bring herself back to the red table. For years now, the actress and personality — known for movies like “Set It Off” and “Girls Trip,” as well as for her high-profile marriage to Will Smith and family life — has traded on a sort of tactical openness. “Red Table Talk,” a streaming series in which she, her daughter Willow Smith, and her mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris discuss personal matters, has, its 2018 launch to its leaving Facebook Watch and going on hiatus earlier this year, helped rebrand a performer already recognized for her flair and edge as a say-almost-everything matriarch.
And the vivid public life of Will Smith — including his dishy 2021 memoir “Will” and his turbulent 2022 Oscar night — has kept Jada’s name in headlines, too. Now, though, Pinkett Smith seeks to thread a very narrow needle: Correcting a record that she has helped to establish in the first place. Her publicity blitz around her forthcoming memoir “Worthy,” to be released Oct.
17, has been a lengthy announcement that much of what we know about her is wrong. That’s an interesting space to carve out for a star who has, for years now, been seizing the means of production. “Red Table Talk,” for instance, is produced by the Smith family’s Westbrook company.
What we know about Pinkett Smith — including what she’s now announcing as misperceptions and half-truths — we know because she’s told us. Take her announcement, for instance, that she and Will Smith have been separated since 2016. This seems like a bombshell, not least because, as recently as 2020, the pair were breaking down the fissures in their relationship, and how they got past them, in a much-discussed “Red Table
.