Talk about double-talk!
Jada Pinkett Smith, the insufferable half of Hollywood’s most bizarre couple — if they even are still a couple, which we’ll get to shortly — is out promoting her new memoir, pretentiously titled ‘Worthy.’
Here, in a nutshell, is our clear, honest, direct Jada, talking to NBC’s equally pseudo-intellectual Hoda Kotb:
Hoda: ‘I feel like you’re a straight talker.’
Jada: ‘I am.’
Hoda: ‘Except you’re not sometimes.’
Jada: ‘Yeah.’
Buckle up! We are in for the truth — excuse me, Jada’s ‘truth’ — about her marriage, The Slap, and a media that just won’t leave the poor Smiths alone.
Talk about double-talk! Jada Pinkett Smith , the insufferable half of Hollywood’s most bizarre couple — if they even are still a couple, which we’ll get to shortly — is out promoting her new memoir, pretentiously titled ‘Worthy.’
Buckle up! We are in for the truth — excuse me, Jada’s ‘truth’ — about her marriage, The Slap, and a media that just won’t leave the poor Smiths alone. (Pictured: Jada and Will Smith at the Vanity Fair Oscar afterparty in 2022).
Her big reveal, the sensational headline that’s meant to give Jada her Norma Desmond moment, the spotlight solely on her, is this: She and Will, who have aggressively marketed themselves as a decades-long marriage success story, have been separated for the last seven years.
Except, maybe… they’re not? Back to that meeting of the minds.
‘It was not a divorce on paper,’ Hoda asks, ‘but it was a divorce?’
‘Divorce,’ Jada affirms.
So why not just announce it? Why keep up this years-long charade?
‘I think just not being ready yet,’ Jada says, despite having seven years to acclimate herself. ‘Still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in partnership, right?’
Jada’s new memoir is titled ‘Worthy’.
Huh? Isn’t the point of divorce to no longer be ‘in partnership’? What on earth is Jada Pinkett Smith talking about? Can she make it make sense?
Seriously, these are the question any interviewer should be asking. But instead, here’s Hoda and People magazine and any number of outlets taking Jada at her illogical, nonsensical, self-important word.
Here’s Hoda leaning in, literally, practically begging for approbation, while Jada sits regally upright, in her expensive hoodie-leather jacket combo, taking it all in.
Hoda goes so far as to tell us that Jada ‘is candid and honest throughout this book.’
Sure. Who wouldn’t believe someone who has just told us that she and Will have lied to the public for the better part of a decade, that they are as good as divorced… and yet: ‘I made a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce. We will work through whatever. And I just haven’t been able to break that promise.’
Note the glee on Jada’s face, that ear-to-ear smile and the severing hand gestures, as she tells us that she and Will are no more.
This is a woman who has always seemed to enjoy publicly humiliating her far more famous and successful husband.
Just look at her unboxing video on Twitter, marveling over a copy of her newly-published memoir, surrounded by family as Will grins maniacally all the way in the back, struggling to see.
Jada appears to be, as is au courant, both a victim and a strong woman. Deceitful when it suits her but otherwise honest. The beneficiary of her husband’s wealth and fame, while also the seething, deeply resentful other half.
Her big reveal, the sensational headline that’s meant to give Jada her Norma Desmond moment, the spotlight solely on her, is this: She and Will (pictured in 2022), who have aggressively marketed themselves as a marriage success story, have been separated for the last seven years. Why not just announce it? Why keep up this years-long charade?
What can we say? Jada Pinkett Smith contains multitudes.
Recall her revelation in July 2020 on ‘Red Table Talk’, her budget Facebook show, about cheating on Will with August Alsina, a much younger man who was good friends with her son Jaden.
A revelation, by the way, that she divulged with Will seated at that table opposite her, embarrassed and emasculated.
A ‘revelation’ — why? After all, it was 2020, and if we are to take Jada at her word, she and Will had already been separated-slash-divorced for four years.
But whose fault was this scandal? The media’s, of course!
‘This Red Table, for me — just, all the stuff that’s going on in the press,’ Jada says. ‘I felt like it was important to come to the table to really clear the air…’
‘And one of the reasons why I wanted to come to the table,’ Will chimes in, ‘is the media, the headlines —’
‘Ugh!’ Jada groans.
‘We specifically never said anything,’ Will says.
Yet these two were saying this on a show Jada built off their familial dysfunction and disclosures.
This is the only way she’s ever been able to get attention for herself, and then she turns around and blames ‘the media’ — a media she has no problem using to flog her ridiculous memoir — for all her marital woes.
Here’s Jada describing her wedding day during a 2018 episode of ‘Red Table Talk’:
‘I never wanted to get married… I really didn’t wanna get married… I was so pissed I went crying down the freaking aisle. I cried the whole way down the aisle.’
Will Smith was part of that ‘Red Table Talk’, too. She said this to her husband’s face.
What can we say? Jada Pinkett Smith contains multitudes. Recall her revelation in July 2020 on ‘Red Table Talk’, her budget Facebook show, about cheating on Will with August Alsina (pictured), a much younger man who was good friends with her son Jaden. A revelation, by the way, that she divulged with Will seated opposite her, embarrassed and emasculated.
Which brings us to The Slap at the 2022 Oscars.
First, she tells Hoda that her reaction to Chris Rock’s joke about her shaved head — the eyeroll followed by the death glare she shot to a laughing Will — had nothing to do with her vanity.
Oh no. Jada is about a much larger cause.
‘I did that eye roll not so much for me,’ she says, extending a perfectly manicured index finger to make this most serious of points. ‘I think this is really important — but the fact that there could be a jab at alopecia.’
Alopecia! The humanity!
Thankfully, Jada’s hair has grown back in time for this press tour.
But as for that inglorious Oscar moment: Will, after slapping Rock in the face onstage, retakes his seat and yells, ‘Keep my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth.’
Jada says she was stunned — not by her husband’s violent act, but that Will called her his ‘wife’. Even though, you know, they went to the Oscars and presented themselves as a happily married couple. Even though after the fact, they both insisted that Will was simply defending his wife’s honor.
Jada apparently toggles the space-time continuum. Sometimes she’s half of an A-list power couple. Other times she has no idea why Will thinks they’re still married.
‘I’m really shocked,’ Jada tells Hoda. ‘Mind you, I’m not there. We haven’t called each other “husband” and “wife” in a long time. I’m like “What is going on right now?”’
No concern expressed for the man who was just violently assaulted during a live broadcast witnessed by billions — a moment that became a meme, that will live forever.
Nope, Jada is concerned with one thing only: Nomenclature.
No matter that after the Oscars, Will and Jada took their three kids to the Vanity Fair afterparty and danced to Will’s lousy music and proudly peacocked as a strong family unit unbowed by his disgraceful act.
Oh, and let us not forget Jada’s struggle in all this.
As for that inglorious Oscar moment: Will, after slapping Rock in the face onstage, retakes his seat and yells, ‘Keep my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth.’ Jada says she was stunned, not by her husband’s violent act, but that Will called her his ‘wife’. Even though, you know, they went to the Oscars and presented themselves as a happily married couple. Even though after the fact, they both insisted that Will was simply defending his wife’s honor.
‘My honest opinion,’ she says to Hoda, without a trace of irony, ‘is that narrative had to do with the false narrative that I helped to create on the Red Table… the adulterous wife.’
She’s so complex! Narratives upon false narratives that she created yet wants to dismantle. The mind reels.
Jada’s book is billed as ‘a woman’s journey to finding herself again,’ a meaningless trope in our post-Oprah self-actualization age.
Her publisher describes it as ‘a gripping, at times painfully honest’ — note that qualifier, ‘at times’ — ‘and ultimately inspirational memoir from global superstar Jada Pinkett Smith.’
Global superstar! The delusion is strong with this one.
Will: File for divorce. For real. Jada’s only currency is in being Mrs. Will Smith — when it suits her, that is.
And for anyone considering purchasing this book — well, as Jada’s mindboggling, contradictory, self-satisfied statements should tell us: Buyer beware.
We literally cannot believe a word she says.
