Before Jada Pinkett Smith was a successful actress and the wife of one of the world’s most famous movie stars, she had a less reputable source of income. In an interview with People, Pinkett Smith repeated a revelation from 2017 that she was a drug dealer while growing up as a teenager in Baltimore.
“I thought I was going to be a queenpin for sure,” Pinkett Smith told the magazine in advance of the Oct. 17 release of her memoir Worthy.
“You can get caught up in the scenery,” she said. “I was rollin’ with some really high rollers at the time. That’s a whole ‘nother Jada, a whole ‘nother Jada that would chase somebody down the alley with a switchblade because they stole $700.”
Pinkett Smith said she “had parents who were addicted to drugs” and that influenced her in her search for financial freedom. Crack cocaine became her merchandise, though her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, has publicly acknowledged regret for having used heroin. Her father, Robsol Pinkett Jr., died of an overdose at the age of 57 in 2010.
“When you aren’t a priority of your parents, you don’t know how to be a priority to yourself,” Pinkett Smith said.
Pinkett Smith’s late grandmother, Marion Banfield, also influenced her.
“She taught me never to depend on a man for pleasure or money,” the 52-year-old actress said. “She was always like, ‘Your pleasure belongs to you. Do not depend on a man for finances.’ ”
After working a myriad of jobs since the age of 12, Pinkett Smith took the advice literally and decided to sell drugs.
“I knew that anything that I needed, was something I needed to provide for,” she said.
