“Red Table Talk” helped Jada Pinkett Smith cope with the death of a close friend.
The 47-year-old actress found out that her pal had passed away just minutes before she filmed an episode of the Facebook Watch show about loss. Although the ‘Bad Moms’ star found it difficult to get to work, she thinks it helped her process her grief.
“I think that the most difficult topic for me to tackle … the most difficult show probably for me to shoot was the show about loss,” Pinkett Smith said. “Because I had just several minutes before I was going to the table.
“I got a call that one of my girlfriends passed away and that was tough. And it was really ironic doing a show about loss and then I find out my girlfriend died. Yeah, that was a tough show, that was a tough show.”
The actress-wife of movie star Will Smith, revealed that filming the show – on which she is joined by her daughter, Willow Smith, and her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris – made her think about her grief on a deeper level than she would have otherwise.
“It definitely helped me process it in a different way than I would have if I was alone. I think it made me have to really think about it,” Pinkett Smith explained. “I think if I were alone I would have just dealt with my emotion versus dealing with, what is. Does that make sense? You know what I mean, you go into your emotions and that can be an abyss of just pure pain and sorrow.
“Versus dealing with what is and it’s like she’s free. She no longer has to deal with pain, you know, so I was able to go into that space more quickly and take a step back instead of just diving into ‘Oh my God.’ It was just like okay and find peace a bit more quickly.”
New episodes of “Red Table Talk” are coming in September, exclusively on Facebook Watch.
