Childhood trauma.
Crying in her wedding dress.
A lifetime of marital issues.
Jada Pinkett Smith may live in luxury, but her life is anything but rosy.
This is everything you need to know about her tragic real-life story.
Jada Pinkett Smith revealed in an early episode of her Facebook Watch series "Red Table Talk"
that her mom, Adrienne Banfield Norris, had been a heroin addict for most of Pinkett Smith's
childhood.
"She couldn't make it on time to pick me up from school.
Or, she's nodding off, falling asleep in the middle of something."
Fortunately, Banfield Norris has been sober since the '90s — but according to the Red
Table Talk co-hosts, the scars the addiction left on her daughter and their relationship
have never totally gone away.
Tragically, Jada herself has also struggled with her addiction.
She's described herself as a person with addictions
to more than one substance, and also as someone
with a tendency toward binging on those substances.
Speaking on Red Table Talk, the star once recounted what she called a "rock bottom"
experience with alcohol that eventually led to her quitting the drink cold turkey.
"You're in this house by yourself going on to your third bottle of wine.
You might have a problem.'"
Thankfully, despite the past transgressions, Pinkett Smith and her mom have a much closer
relationship today.
Banfield Norris even traveled with her daughter more than once to help take care of her kids
— something that Pinkett Smith expressed gratitude for on "Red Table Talk."
She told her mom on the series:
"It helped me so much, because if I didn't have you, I wouldn't have been able to do
The Matrix.
I wouldn't have been able to keep working.
You went with me everywhere.
And because of you, I was able to have my children with me.
So, thank you."
In an episode of "Red Table Talk," Jada Pinkett Smith opened up about struggling to forgive
her late father, Robsol Pinkett Jr., who died of an overdose.
Pinkett Jr. was not there throughout his daughter's
childhood.
He instead reached out only after Pinkett Smith beat the odds and achieved success in
her career.
"The issue for me was when I got into the position I got in and then he wanted to have
a relationship."
Pinkett Smith later admitted that her complicated relationship with her father impacted her
romantic relationships as an adult.
"You expect your intimate partners to in some way be the thing that your father wasn't."
Jada Pinkett Smith also saw her mother, Adrienne Banfield Norris, endure domestic abuse from
her father throughout her childhood.
During one episode of "Red Table Talk," the "Set It Off" star recalled asking her mother
about a scar on her back.
She explained that seeing the scar was the first time she realized her mother was a victim
of domestic abuse.
Banfield-Jones went on to recall a terrifying incident in which she had to flee her own
home in order to escape the abuse.
"I don't even remember what the argument was about, but he started hitting me, and he was
in a rage."
Pinkett Smith was later brought to tears after hearing a family friend's heartbreaking experience
in an abusive relationship.
It seems the star was moved by the guest's story partly because of her own tragic childhood.
When asked about her relationship with the late rapper Tupac Shakur on the Sirius XM
show Sway's Universe, Jada Pinkett Smith casually dropped a bomb.
"When I first met Pac, when we first met, I was a drug dealer.
Yes."
She didn't elaborate much on the topic during that interview.
However, the next day, Access Hollywood was able to pull a few more details out of the
"Bad Moms" star.
Citing her desire to clear up misconceptions about this period of her life, Pinkett Smith
revealed that her mother "saved" her by forcing her to leave Baltimore to attend North Carolina
School of the Arts.
"One day she just packed the car and was just like, 'You're getting outta here.'"
This was the turning point in Pinkett Smith's life, and one that also served as a fundamental
change in her relationship with Tupac.
She told Access Hollywood:
"I had started out one way, and Pac, you know, started out one way, and we kinda switched
roles.”
Jada Pinkett Smith and Tupac Shakur quickly became friends after they met on her first
day at Baltimore High School for the Arts.
Pinkett Smith once said that she didn't feel he was the type of guy she'd normally hang
out with, but he eventually drew her to him, in her words, "like a magnet."
They maintained a platonic friendship, even after Pinkett Smith moved to Los Angeles and
Shakur went to prison.
But once Shakur was released, his outlook on life seemed to change, causing a rift between
them.
This wasn't their first big blowout, but Pinkett Smith told Howard Stern that after Shakur
was fatally shot and killed in 1996, she deeply regretted losing the opportunity to tell him
how she felt about him.
"Do not let disagreements stand in between you and people that you love and care about."
"I can tell you're really emotional about him.
I mean, you're crying."
To this day, she is still emotional about losing her friend, telling Sway's Universe
that their friendship filled a deep need for her at that time in her life.
"When you have somebody that has your back when you feel like you're nothing — that's
everything."
With drugs and addiction weighing so heavily on her life since childhood, Jada Pinkett
Smith eventually hit an emotional low point.
On another episode of "Red Table Talk," she opened up about wanting to commit suicide
when she was 20 years old, and how she called her mother "in a panic."
"I became extremely suicidal, and I had a complete emotional collapse."
She initially managed the situation with Prozac, but little did she know, it would kill her
sex drive, which prompted her to eventually quit the medication.
Therapy also didn't help, forcing Pinkett Smith to forge her own path to mental health.
"I had to just let go."
"Yeaaah."
"You know and just come to terms with just what life is."
Despite her decision to quit therapy and medication,
Pinkett Smith acknowledged that for many,
those treatments do work and are necessary.
Jada Pinkett Smith was also shocked when her daughter, Willow, admitted on an episode of
Red Table Talk that she had also gone through a period of emotional pain and had briefly
struggled with self harm.
Despite the shock, Jada later told Ryan Seacrest that she doesn't blame herself and understands
why Willow didn't tell her.
"This is not about you; this is not about what you should have done.
This is really about you listening to your daughter and celebrating her strength."
While her marriage to Will Smith has been total Relationship Goals for so many of us,
Jada Pinkett Smith has admitted that for the longest time, she didn't want to get married.
The "Girls Trip" star explained that she was already three months pregnant at the time
that she got married to Will Smith.
She's said that she felt pressured to have a wedding, and was actually in tears as she
walked down the aisle.
She recalled on an episode of Red Table Talk,
"My first trimester was horrible.
And I was so upset that I had to have a wedding.
I was so pissed."
She also said she was never a fan of the idea of marriage in general.
"I just never really agreed with the construct.
I just don't agree with it.
I never have.
I still don't."
Will and Jada prefer to call themselves life partners, rather than being married.
As she told People:
"I needed a different form to dissolve all the expectations that I had of a marriage.
I needed to do that to see Will outside of 'husband' and see him as a human being."
On another episode of "Red Table Talk," Jada opened up about the serious marital struggles
she and Will Smith had dealt with.
She said that early on in their marriage, she felt she was living a life that seemed
beautiful on the outside, but was actually in many ways inauthentic.
Will, who also appeared on the episode, admitted that his desire to shower Jada with beautiful
things — including a mansion and lavish 40th birthday party — was more about his
own emotional needs than hers.
"What I realized is I was building a picture.
I grew up in a household where I was scared and watched my father beat my mother up, right?
So, I was gonna build the complete opposite of that […] I had a public perception that
I wanted to project of our relationship."
Jada recalled being unhappy and yet confused at the same time, since her life on the outside
was picture perfect.
"Mommy woke up and cried for 45 days straight.
I started keeping a diary."
Fans may recall that Pinkett Smith previously revealed she was romantically involved with
singer August Alsina during a period of separation in her marriage.
It appears that the infamous "entanglement" brought the couple closer together in the
end.
She told Will:
"One of the things that I'm deeply grateful for in this whole process between you and
I is that we have really gotten to that new place of unconditional love."
"So I really think that it takes a lot of work separately, honestly, in order to have
a good union."
While Jada Pinkett Smith looks super stylish in headscarves, it turns out there's a very
specific reason she wears them.
On another "Red Table Talk" episode, she revealed that she's been struggling with hair loss.
The discovery of the condition was traumatic for her.
"You know I was in the shower one day, and then just handfuls of hair, just in my hands.
I was just like, 'Oh my god.
Am I going bald?'"
She also revealed that her alopecia was the reason for her close-cropped, asymmetrical
hairstyles.
Later, she explained in a video on Instagram that she's been treating her hair loss with
steroid injections, which according to her are "helping, but not curing" her condition.
In late March of 2022, the topic of Pinkett Smith's hair loss battle came up again following
a heated moment at one of the most controversial Oscars ceremonies to date.
During the show, comedian Chris Rock joked about Jada's bald read and referenced the
film "G.I.
Jane," in which the female lead sports a
clean-shaven head.
Pinkett Smith's husband, Will Smith, reacted by getting up from his seat to slap the comedian
in an attempt to defend his wife.
If you or someone you know is struggling with Domestic Abuse,
please call or chat online with the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts please
call or chat online with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).