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Willow Smith shocked mum Jada Pinkett Smith on their latest episode of Red Table Talk.
The Facebook Watch talk show, which stars the mother-daughter duo as well as Jada’s mom Adrienne Banfield-Jones, centered its second episode around dealing with loss. And when Jada asks Willow what her greatest loss was, the 17-year-old reveals that she lost her “sanity” shortly after her hit song “Whip My Hair” came out in 2010.
“It was after that whole ‘Whip My Hair’ thing and I had just stopped doing singing lessons and I was kind of just in this gray area of, ‘Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?’ ” Willow says of her 10-year-old self.
“After the tour and the promotion and all of that, they wanted me to finish my album,” she continues. “And I was like, I’m not gonna do that. And after all of that kinda settled down and it was like a kind of lull, I was just listening to a lot of dark music. It was just so crazy and I was plunged into this black hole, and I was cutting myself.”
Jada and Adrienne are immediately shocked, revealing that they had no idea the young singer was going through that.
“What? When were you cutting yourself?” Jada says. “I didn’t see that part. Cutting yourself where?”
“On my wrist. I mean, you can’t even see it but there’s still a little something there,” Willow responds. “But like, totally lost my sanity for a moment there. I never talk about it because it was such a short weird point in my life. But you have to pull yourself out of it.”
Willow explains that she started self-harming because she felt like her emotional pain wasn’t reflected on the outside, and cutting meant she could physically touch the pain. She says she didn’t tell her family, including dad Will Smith and brother Jaden Smith, but did confide in a friend. Willow says she eventually stopped when she realize it was “actually psychotic.”
“That’s good to freaking know!” Jada exclaims after Willow finishes her story. “Willow, I had no idea. I never saw any signs of that.”
Red Table Talk has generated headlines for its honest conversations ever since its first episode aired a week ago. The debut episode featured the Girls Tripactress sitting down with Sheree Fletcher to have an honest and open conversation about the difficult times they faced trying to become a blended family. Jada started dating the actor while he was still married to Fletcher, with whom he shared a 3-year-old son, Trey, at the time. Jada and Smith have since been married for 20 years.
“Because I did not understand marriage, I did not understand divorce, I probably should have fell back,” Jada admitted in the clip, to which Fletcher jokingly replies, “You think?”
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