Willow Smith had to learn how to “forgive” her parents after her early success with “Whip My Hair.”
The 18-year-old daughter of Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith released the smash hit single in 2010 when she was just 10 years old and has said she had a complicated relationship with her parents after reaching stardom because she felt like “no-one cared” about her feelings.
Speaking on her mother’s Facebook Watch show “Red Table Talk,” Willow said, “I definitely had to forgive you and daddy for that whole ‘Whip My Hair’ thing. It was mostly daddy because he was so harsh at certain times. It was a couple of years, honestly. Trying to regain trust for not feeling like I was being listened to or like no one cared how I felt.
“And I had to forgive myself because I felt guilty because everyone is trying to make me better, trying to make my dream. But I didn’t really understand what my dream entailed.”
Earlier this year on the show, she admitted to self-harming during the height of the single’s chart success.
She said: “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 grey area of, ‘Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?’
“After the tour and the promotion and all of that, they wanted me to finish my album. 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, 47, was left shocked by the news, as she asked her daughter, “What? When were you cutting yourself? I didn’t see that part. Cutting yourself where?”
To which Willow responded, “On my wrist. I mean, you can’t even see it but there’s still a little something there. 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.”
