Speaker 1: Hey, fam I'm Jada Pinkett Smith and this is the
Speaker 1: Red Table Pop podcast, all your favorite episodes from the
Speaker 1: Facebook watch show in audio, produced by Westbrook Audio and
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Please don't forget to rate and review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. Last time at the Red Table, Will
Speaker 1: and I shared some very private truths about our relationship.
Speaker 1: I was building a picture. I felt that money and
Speaker 1: winning made a good relationship, just like any couple has
Speaker 1: been together for close to twenty five years. We went
Speaker 1: through every emotion. There was a period where Mommy woke
Speaker 1: up and cried forty five days straight, and one day
Speaker 1: our marriage came crashing down. I was failing miserably. I
Speaker 1: can't do this like this anymore. We came to the
Speaker 1: realization that we had to redefine our relationship. This is
Speaker 1: our journey to finding unconditional love. We're back at the
Speaker 1: Red Table with Will because episode one was not enough,
Speaker 1: so we're going to continue the conversation. Where was your
Speaker 1: hardest time in our marriage? I think the turning point
Speaker 1: in our relationship for me happened when I turned forty.
Speaker 1: That's when I had a midlife crisis. Yeah, your forty
Speaker 1: birthday was my low point. The day after her thirty
Speaker 1: seventh birthday, I hired a team to orchestrate her fortieth birthday.
Speaker 1: I had hired a documentary team. I traced Mommy's family roots.
Speaker 1: Her fortieth birthday was gonna be my thing. It was
Speaker 1: gonna be a splash Mary J. Blige. Mary J. Blige
Speaker 1: performed that debuted the film all of that. It was
Speaker 1: going to be the thing that lifted her out of
Speaker 1: this midlife crisis. And she was gonna be my deepest,
Speaker 1: most beautiful proclamation of love. And we did it. And
Speaker 1: I had found tapes of Jada's grandmother, and her grandmother
Speaker 1: had recorded these voice messages over the last like eight
Speaker 1: months of her life, and it was tapes that Jada
Speaker 1: had never heard. So Jada had to sit there and listen.
Speaker 1: I understand thoroughly now at the time I didn't. But
Speaker 1: she's listening to these never before her tapes of one
Speaker 1: of the dearest people she's ever known in her life,
Speaker 1: in front of all of these people. So she's holding
Speaker 1: it together, she's getting it together. Then I had Mary J.
Speaker 1: Blige performing the whole time. I'm like the little boy
Speaker 1: that wants Mommy to say everything was wonderful. Right, and
Speaker 1: she's having a really difficult emotional time. And then when
Speaker 1: we got back to the room, it was me, you
Speaker 1: and mommy and we were talking about the next day
Speaker 1: and they were things playing for the next day, and
Speaker 1: she said, I'm not sure I want to do anything
Speaker 1: the next day. You can just cancel it. And I said,
Speaker 1: well we can. Let's keep it and then tomorrow you
Speaker 1: can decide. She was like, I'm telling you now, I
Speaker 1: don't want to do anything tomorrow. And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: it's okay, it's okay, we'll just wait and see. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to have intimate, just intimate time. And I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I'll cancel. To mar she was like,
Speaker 1: it's my birthday, right, And she's told me that the
Speaker 1: party was the most ridiculous display of my ego. Crushed, right,
Speaker 1: And to this day I know I was crushed because
Speaker 1: it was true. It wasn't a party for her. And
Speaker 1: when she called me on that, that's when I snapped.
Speaker 1: And I'm sorry. That was the only time you ever
Speaker 1: heard me snap, thank god, And I snapped in front
Speaker 1: of Willow. Was the only time in her childhood she
Speaker 1: ever saw me snap. And I saw her look and
Speaker 1: Willow Star was crying and I was like, baby, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Just figure it out, you guys, please just
Speaker 1: figure it out. Just figure it out, right, And I
Speaker 1: was like, and this is that was a display that
Speaker 1: moment of like me having the courage to just say no,
Speaker 1: but now I had to have the courage to unravel
Speaker 1: it and just realizing this next forty I gotta do
Speaker 1: it my way. This next half has to be directed
Speaker 1: by my picture for myself. I have to say that
Speaker 1: when you guys were going through that transition, I was like,
Speaker 1: what the hell right, because everything was just changing. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know there was a need for change.
Speaker 1: There was so much that wasn't me, that I was
Speaker 1: living so much inauthenticity. I do think that there're a
Speaker 1: lot more people living lives that aren't true then because
Speaker 1: of their fear. So I understand, and there's no judgment.
Speaker 1: I did it right, and with some of that which
Speaker 1: you felt like you had to present yourself to the public.
Speaker 1: I was much more conscious of public perception than Jada. Right,
Speaker 1: there was an idea. I think I was trying to
Speaker 1: live up to an idea for him. Right, I got
Speaker 1: some pictures I was crying so hard after your birthday
Speaker 1: that my eyes were looked so red. I took pictures
Speaker 1: of myself and I was like, I want to remember this.
Speaker 1: That was a difficult one for me when you stopped
Speaker 1: clapping when I did things in the exterior world that
Speaker 1: were great. Willow really broke it for me with with
Speaker 1: my hair. In the middle of all the whip my
Speaker 1: hair stuff. She was on tour and it was she
Speaker 1: was having it was a great show and everything was amazing.
Speaker 1: It was like it was we were at the top
Speaker 1: of the world. With my hair. It's blade jay Z
Speaker 1: side is beautiful. And she was like, Okay, I'm done, Daddy.
Speaker 1: That was like, sweetie, you can't. You can't be done.
Speaker 1: You know, you made a commitment. She was like, but
Speaker 1: I got I'm finished. I was like, I'm no, sweetie,
Speaker 1: but you can't be finished. You made a commitment to
Speaker 1: Mr jay Z. He's no, daddy, you made a commitment
Speaker 1: to Mr jay Z. Yes. You were like, Daddy, it
Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't matter that I'm done. Yes, sweetie, it
Speaker 1: matters a lot, it does, But you can't be done.
Speaker 1: She came down the next day and had shaved her
Speaker 1: head ball. I was like, does she know what she's doing?
Speaker 1: Like that was a deep protest. What it did from
Speaker 1: me is I had a crazy realization in that moment
Speaker 1: I was building what I wanted for her, and she
Speaker 1: tried all of the different ways to say I don't
Speaker 1: want that. I was like, I get it. And I
Speaker 1: saw for the first time what Jada had been saying
Speaker 1: the whole time, about hiding behind my ego and my
Speaker 1: dream meams and my desires and pretending like it's love.
Speaker 1: And I realized she didn't want none of the stuff
Speaker 1: I had built. The house was too big, it was
Speaker 1: always too many people here. She didn't want to have
Speaker 1: to travel theway we traveled. She didn't want all of
Speaker 1: her kids to be getting trolled on Twitter like. She
Speaker 1: didn't want any of that. And that's why I stopped clapping.
Speaker 1: There was a decline from there. To have to let
Speaker 1: go of the picture, to have to let go of
Speaker 1: the dream was devastating. We essentially had to destroy our marriage.
Speaker 1: She was like, I can't do this anymore, and to me,
Speaker 1: that was it was over. But she divorce was never
Speaker 1: even an option. I was like, wait, a man, hold no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Like when people I was reading in the tabloids that
Speaker 1: we were getting divorced and all of that stuff, and
Speaker 1: it was like it was never didn't see the divorce
Speaker 1: lawyer was like, that was never. It was never even
Speaker 1: to consider mine, Like, but was it for you? Because
Speaker 1: I had been divorced before, I wasn't getting divorced again, right,
Speaker 1: I wasn't like divorce wasn't an option. There was a
Speaker 1: time when I was scared that she might know I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell you like this, I put in too much period.
Speaker 1: What is most important to me is my family. You
Speaker 1: would think about the kids. I was thinking about our family,
Speaker 1: not even just our immediate nucleus, but we have such
Speaker 1: a huge extended family. And I knew that divorce wasn't necessary.
Speaker 1: Why do that? Why create all that disruption? I told
Speaker 1: Will from the gate, I said, let me tell you something.
Speaker 1: If you marry me, know this, We're going to be together.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be under the same roof. You might be
Speaker 1: on one end of that joker with somebody else, with
Speaker 1: somebody else, And I always said that it's ridiculous. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be yeah, in this joke together. That's what we
Speaker 1: are gonna do. That's not what either of us wants.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to leave this table making people
Speaker 1: feel like divorce is wrong. Sometimes that is what you need,
Speaker 1: right for whatever you need to discover about your situation yourself.
Speaker 1: But for me personally, I knew that there was no
Speaker 1: reason that he and I whatever, We just needed to
Speaker 1: get to agreement between he and I. I was devastated,
Speaker 1: even worse than a divorce. We we broke up within
Speaker 1: our marriage and got back together again. I had to rebuild.
Speaker 1: I had to rebuild with new rules and something way different,
Speaker 1: something way completely different. The thing about it is that
Speaker 1: you really have to go your separate ways to figure
Speaker 1: out your stuff. You gotta be strong enough and understand
Speaker 1: clearly what it is you're in search for. You know
Speaker 1: what it is you want, what it is you don't want,
Speaker 1: because that whole time when you're when you're in a union,
Speaker 1: you're pointing fingers because you're thinking it's your partner because
Speaker 1: her fault. This house is great, exactly, This house is great,
Speaker 1: this family is great. In a golden cage, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, And so you have to get your
Speaker 1: life built for her appreciated. A golden cage is a
Speaker 1: beautiful cage. But you have to go your separate ways
Speaker 1: and get out of each other's way to really see yourself.
Speaker 1: So I had to go away gain my strength as
Speaker 1: Jada again, not mommy, not wife Jada. That's the big one.
Speaker 1: That's the big one. People say it all the time.
Speaker 1: I have to find myself. Yo. That's real. That's real talk.
Speaker 1: That's real talk. Right. I took off for two years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I worked on myself. I've read on marriage and relationships
Speaker 1: and behavioral psychology. I was not going to fail in
Speaker 1: this marriage, right, But I shut down for two entire
Speaker 1: years to see what what was I doing wrong? And
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of beating up on each other
Speaker 1: because really what you're breaking down is all the fantasies,
Speaker 1: burning away, all of your fantasies because that fantasy starts
Speaker 1: so young, yes, and you hold on too that for
Speaker 1: damn life, because that's all you know. Right. Ultimately, to
Speaker 1: have a successful relationship, you have to be in a
Speaker 1: relationship with a human being, imperfect, flawed human being. Because
Speaker 1: what happens was our characters. We're trying to have a relationship,
Speaker 1: and if you're gonna wear a mask, then the person
Speaker 1: is trying to love your mask right there, trying to
Speaker 1: love the image that you're presenting. But that's not what
Speaker 1: you really need. What you really come to understand that
Speaker 1: there's no right or wrong. Everybody's operating from a place
Speaker 1: of hurt. Everybody's broken, everybody's broken. And what I realized
Speaker 1: the idea that my brokenness created. All of my discomfort
Speaker 1: absolutely mine to the fact that I was broken, and
Speaker 1: I learned how to look fixed to the world. Will
Speaker 1: Smith is a character, right, but deep down inside I
Speaker 1: was an insecure little boy that wanted Jada to say
Speaker 1: I was great, right, and if she didn't say I
Speaker 1: was great, the dragon came out. But for me personally,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of emotional maturity to do. I
Speaker 1: had just realized I had a lot of childhood traumas
Speaker 1: that I had brought to me that I wasn't aware
Speaker 1: of a lot of father issues, And you know, I
Speaker 1: realized that I had to learn to be a lot
Speaker 1: of things for myself because I used to think, well,
Speaker 1: if you don't need somebody, then you can't love them exactly.
Speaker 1: And if you're not needed, then you're not loved. That
Speaker 1: was a false belief I had. I can't expect someone
Speaker 1: to love me more than me. You know, if you
Speaker 1: don't like being with you, how it makes you think
Speaker 1: somebody else wants to be with you if you don't
Speaker 1: love yourself, we expect people to love us more than
Speaker 1: we love ourselves. We expect other people to do the
Speaker 1: work for us. I definitely went through that with Will.
Speaker 1: I thought it was his job to make me feel
Speaker 1: a certain way. I had to break that fantasy. I
Speaker 1: actually retired. I said, Jada, you know what, I retired.
Speaker 1: I am no longer doing the job of trying to
Speaker 1: make you happy. You know what, You are free to
Speaker 1: go make yourself happy, and you do anything anything you
Speaker 1: want to make yourself happy, and you bring your ass
Speaker 1: back here happy, just to show me that it's even possible. Yep,
Speaker 1: just fly delicate. You know. I was angry, but it's
Speaker 1: really that's true, And that's the thing I had to learn.
Speaker 1: I have to be the thing that I'm asking for,
Speaker 1: and if I can be it, then I can create it.
Speaker 1: I would say, if there were a thing that was
Speaker 1: the most detrimental um to our relationship during that time,
Speaker 1: was my unconsciousness. The other side of that is the
Speaker 1: key to a relationship is understanding your partner's plight. Right,
Speaker 1: there's nothing greater for a human being than to feel understood.
Speaker 1: I had built everything I had ever dreamed about as
Speaker 1: a little boy. I saw this family, I saw this life.
Speaker 1: I've been building this, and I was like, no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: what's important is how we're connecting internally, like how we're
Speaker 1: relating to heart. We're the complete opposite. These are the
Speaker 1: things that we had to break, Yes, come to new
Speaker 1: understanding and recreate. Will and I have decided to even
Speaker 1: throw away the concept of marriage. We don't even call
Speaker 1: ourselves marriage anymore. You know. It's a life partnership in
Speaker 1: the sense that we've created a foundation together that we
Speaker 1: know is for this lifetime. This lifetime, we have devoted
Speaker 1: ourselves to each other in a spiritual sense and a
Speaker 1: spiritual sense, spiritual emotional. It's like, whatever she needs, she
Speaker 1: can count on me for the rest of her life,
Speaker 1: and vice versa to me. It gives us the freedom
Speaker 1: to create a different context, first of all, for ourselves
Speaker 1: and not have to live up to the expectation of
Speaker 1: what people consider marriage to Expectations are the mother of disappointment.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I can't Yeah, I can't do him
Speaker 1: and Now there's no fight, there's no struggle, there's no
Speaker 1: me needing him to be something or do something. There's
Speaker 1: nothing that could happen that we won't be together and
Speaker 1: love each other and love each other through, love each
Speaker 1: other through. And it's not because we're just saying it.
Speaker 1: It's because we've cracked each other's heads wide open. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: And we woke up the next day and high fived
Speaker 1: and kept going right. And I think that's the part
Speaker 1: that we set each other free right, And people really
Speaker 1: struggle with that. The things that Jada needs to be happy,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to agree with them, all right. I
Speaker 1: truly have learned the definition of unconditional love. And to me,
Speaker 1: that's what it's about. I love you, I support you.
Speaker 1: I'm going to help you be happy no matter what.
Speaker 1: I don't have to like it. Yeah, I describe it
Speaker 1: as the day the deal breakers are gone. We don't
Speaker 1: have any deal breakers. I always knew I'm not marriaged material.
Speaker 1: What I am is right check. What you are is
Speaker 1: the best friend that I've ever had. Kay, You're the
Speaker 1: best partner I've ever had, and sometimes that gets lost
Speaker 1: any marriage. And I think for many years you and
Speaker 1: I oh man, I know, we really kind of tried
Speaker 1: to fit into the We tried. We tried really hard.
Speaker 1: What we have between us is family and friendship. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a life partnership. We are in a union. No
Speaker 1: matter what we talk about any we talk about anything
Speaker 1: and everything. We could we could break a ray table,
Speaker 1: but from of the stuff we talk about real talk.
Speaker 1: To me, that's what being in a relationship. That's what
Speaker 1: I need. And I'm not saying that's for every woman.
Speaker 1: That's what Jada needs, you know what needs. When people
Speaker 1: say love, they mean it transactionally. Right. I love you
Speaker 1: as long as you do things that make me feel good.
Speaker 1: If you don't do the things that make me feel good,
Speaker 1: or if you even worse, you do something that makes
Speaker 1: me feel bad, I don't love you. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to discount, going to disconnect myself from you. When you
Speaker 1: go to sleep at night knowing you have an unbreakable
Speaker 1: love and unbreakable friendship and unbreakable connection, that's how you
Speaker 1: want to go to sleep every night. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: your love for the truth, for the truth. Yes, you
Speaker 1: are not who you think you should be for somebody,
Speaker 1: and that has been the ultimate release and freedom. In
Speaker 1: my experience, the thing that everybody's looking for is not
Speaker 1: found in trapping a person to vows. And releasing each
Speaker 1: other from obligations and expectations has made all of the
Speaker 1: moments blissful. We did a thing probably about four years ago.
Speaker 1: It was like, Okay, here's the deal. We're only going
Speaker 1: to do the things together we love. What happened is
Speaker 1: we gave each other ten days out of the year
Speaker 1: that we would do with the other person. One vacation
Speaker 1: in the summer. She'll come with me because I want
Speaker 1: to while out. I want to be the volcano I wanted.
Speaker 1: And she's that's not vacation for her, right, So but
Speaker 1: she'll go with me for those ten days, and then
Speaker 1: I'll come for Christmas and sit around and do the
Speaker 1: same stuff we did last year with the same where
Speaker 1: do we at all? With the same songs? Right? She
Speaker 1: wants to go on vacations. She wants nostalgia to do
Speaker 1: the same things over and over again. And when I
Speaker 1: go tradition, no, I get it, and I'm there for
Speaker 1: ten days, right, But I want to go in an adventure.
Speaker 1: I don't ever want to go to same places second time.
Speaker 1: And we really gave each other the freedom to do
Speaker 1: the things that the world is my home. Anywhere I am,
Speaker 1: I'm comfortable, and Jada just doesn't that. She doesn't want it.
Speaker 1: It's not fun, it's disruptive. She runs around the globe
Speaker 1: of the soul. That's real time. Yeah, the internal you
Speaker 1: got Lenny Kravitz lyrics like, but that's true. You do
Speaker 1: the external journeying and I do the internal Jarney. It
Speaker 1: took a lot of stepping of Will and I together
Speaker 1: apart together, a lot of understanding, a lot of communication.
Speaker 1: But it took years. It took years, and I would
Speaker 1: say we are just now getting to a place probably
Speaker 1: I would say the last year. Yeah, probably, I've had
Speaker 1: a lot of change in both of you in the
Speaker 1: last year. Last year has been amazing. The paradox of
Speaker 1: it all is so crazy. The pain that Jada caused
Speaker 1: me was the pain I needed to survive to learn
Speaker 1: how to be happy and vice right, I've never been
Speaker 1: happier in my life either. So well, now that we've
Speaker 1: to to the table, are we concerned about all the
Speaker 1: beautiful rumors that will now stir up in the media.
Speaker 1: It's going to be alright, So let's all right, So
Speaker 1: hold on, let's clear some rumors. No, no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: it's not possible, but just to have it on record,
Speaker 1: just think historical rumors. We've never been scientologists. True, we've
Speaker 1: never been swingers, never been never been swing People understood
Speaker 1: that that's a specific lifestyle. That's a really specific slide.
Speaker 1: We've never been swingers. What else? Gam what they what
Speaker 1: they're gonna say. It's really your friends that we're worried about.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be worried about anybody at all at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, because people don't believe whatever they
Speaker 1: want to leave, and who knows, if you know it
Speaker 1: might change and transition again. You know why I never
Speaker 1: got divorced. It's cheaper to keep me even um because
Speaker 1: I've never met anybody like you, and I knew if
Speaker 1: I wasn't with you, I'd be searching in vain for
Speaker 1: the rest of my life. Oh the word. See sometimes
Speaker 1: he says the right thing, the truth. Thank you for coming.
Speaker 1: We appreciate you, and I just want to say thank
Speaker 1: you for everything. We love you. I love you to death.
Speaker 1: You have found something with this red table, in this
Speaker 1: space that I tried my damned this to build for
Speaker 1: you the space where you get to fully and honestly
Speaker 1: and thoroughly be you and to get all of the
Speaker 1: love and the praise that you deserve. When I see
Speaker 1: you on this Red table, it is the joy that
Speaker 1: I have always hoped you would have. Thank you. I
Speaker 1: always knew he was the best thing man ever. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, thank you. That means a lot to me.
Speaker 1: I love you. On our next Red Table Talk, Will
Speaker 1: and I always being accused of being scientologists and this
Speaker 1: and being that. I was just caught up in that
Speaker 1: pain and also the pain of others. I was hurt,
Speaker 1: but Jada I wasn't even considering that she would be hurt. Damn.
Speaker 1: Get in all right, everybody, nothing nasty. I came on
Speaker 1: the Red Table. I smashed a smashed. They never had
Speaker 1: a guest like me. They might they might have to
Speaker 1: cancel the show because it's like what they're gonna do
Speaker 1: after that. Hey, hey, red Table Talk family, let's head
Speaker 1: to our Red Table Talk Facebook watch show page. Join
Speaker 1: the conversation and become a part of red table Talk.
Speaker 1: To join the red Table Talk family and become a
Speaker 1: part of the conversation, follow us at Facebook dot com,
Speaker 1: slash red table Talk. Thanks for listening to this episode
Speaker 1: of red Table Talk podcast, produced by Facebook Watch, Westbrook Audio,
Speaker 1: and I Heart Radio.