Actress Jada Pinkett-Smith recently conducted an interview with Ebony magazine in which she talked about everything from motherhood to reality television and its negative reputation. Check out highlights from the interview now!
Maintaining a balance between home and work.
“It’s not separate. I never stop being a mother and I never stop being an artist. You understand? Which is probably why my kids are so creative, because it’s not separated. You see, when I’m with my kids I’m creating, and I’m still a mom. And when I’m creating I’m still a mom. You know, it’s not like…I don’t wear two different hats. My kids will be on the set with me.”
Discovering inner beauty and strength as a woman and mother.
“Listen, that’s something that you continue to…because you learn it on so many levels. You know, you find one aspect…I look at even my daughter Willow, you know, and she’s way ahead of the game now than I was at her age. And I can only imagine who she’s going to be as a 40-year-old woman. You know, because it’s a journey. It’s a journey. So it’s something that you continue. You don’t get to a destination of it because the more you start to grow, and the more you start to understand, you never stop.”
Willow’s transparency on ‘Red Table Talks.’
“I have to be honest with you, I don’t know which segments you watched because there’s been so many segments dispersed but there was a segment where Willow comes to the table and she says, ‘I just want to tell you how much you mean in my life.’ And she bursts into tears. The Red Table Talk was over, okay. And, you know, we’ve gone to the other room, and she goes, ‘Mommy, I still have something that I need to put on the table.’ And I was like the lights, the guys, technicians had taken the lights. The cameras were down, but she was so adamant. Because you can see it’s dark outside, right, versus when we started it was light, right? And I was like, ‘I’m sorry guys but we’ve got to put these lights back.’ And she got on the table, and I didn’t know what Willow was going to say. And when she started to cry I was like, you know, I was just like, ‘Okay. Just let this flow. This is her moment. This is what she wants to express.’ But it was challenging because as a mother you want to go, ‘Cut. Cut it. Okay. Cut it.’ You know what I mean? But she wanted to come to the table, and her expression and words…like the things that she said, I was in utter shock. I had no idea. I was just like…and just her perspective I was just like, ‘Willow, I never even thought about it like that.’ You know, so the red table for us was just as I mean because it was…you guys saw, it was a bowl with questions. You know what I mean?
So I learned more about my daughter and my mother in that day, and I think that Willow learned a heck of a lot about us. And I mean I still have probably, we were at that red table for about two and a half hours. So I think we’ve shared with you guys maybe 45 minutes of that. But she has another segment that’s crazy. She has another segment that’s out of sight. You know I had to just figure out when to, but she was just amazing throughout the whole thing.”
Reality Television.
“Listen, I think there’s room for everything. You know? I think there’s room for everything, and I think what we have to focus on is balancing. I don’t think we have to focus on, you know, listen everybody is trying to create. Everybody is trying to make a living. Don’t be mad, don’t come down on them. Okay. Talk to the people that are actually putting these shows on and ask them to balance it out. It’s not that those shows shouldn’t exist. It’s not about coming down on people. You know what I mean? It’s just about creating a balance. But also as a community, we have to be more responsible about what we are willing to watch. Now how about that? Okay? And that’s really…that’s what people really don’t want to talk about.
I’m going to tell you something. It’s not that people try to put on programming for us that’s varied. It’s not that people don’t try to create movies for us that are varied. I’ll tell you what, people we need to be more responsible about what we are going to see. Because people only create what we are going to watch. So don’t you come down on them. Folks need to be looking, you know what I mean? Take responsibility about what you have on your TV, and about what you are out there supporting. So people need to check their own individual selves on that one.”
