Jada Pinkett Smith continued to make the press rounds for her upcoming memoir, “Worthy,” appearing on Dax Shepard’s Spotify podcast “Armchair Expert” on Monday.
Amid the headline-making press tour that has aired intimate details of Pinkett Smith’s life and relationship with husband Will Smith, the actress chuckled while saying that she had just been in touch with Smith, telling him, “I told you it was going to be a rough start.”
From remembering Tupac Shakur as her “soulmate” to revealing that she and Smith have been separated for the past seven years, few things appear to be off the table for Pinkett Smith, whether it’s red or not.
Since she started her tour run for “Worthy,” which hits shelves Tuesday, many have turned a side-eye at the actress for airing it all out and getting her famous husband in the media’s crosshairs. Stephen A. Smith, for one, said that Pinkett Smith’s press tour amounts to “a woman who seems hell-bent on sabotaging, excoriating and emasculating her man while she’s making money off of it.”
But to hear Pinkett Smith tell it, she had already discussed with her husband much of what readers are seeing reported. On “Armchair Expert,” she opened up about the rollout of her book being a nerve-racking experience: “This is it, this is jumping into the fire.”
“It’s scary! Right, but I told everybody, especially Will, I was just talking to him on the phone, I was like, ‘I told you it was going to be a rough start, brace for impact!’” she said, adding that she took “inventory” of herself while writing the memoir. “But it’s going to be a cool landing.”
She admitted, though, that she has seen the headlines and what people choose to pull from her story — one that totals 406 pages, she said.
“It’s been interesting what different people take from my story. It’s like, well, no no, no, it’s not exactly that — ah, dammit. OK, cool. You know what I mean? It’s like, oh, OK, that’s your interpretation. Alright, you wanted to start with that? Ah, fine. But you kind of just have to let it go, just trust the process, because it really is a process right now,” Pinkett Smith said.
She continued, calling it a “bummer” that some of anecdotes from her memoir have seemingly been reduced to buzzy headlines.
“But, you know, been there several times over. I’m just glad that there’s a book, so just incase somebody really wants to know what’s going on, you’ve got 406 pages you could read,” she said.
She also said that a lot of the stores shared — such as her separation with Smith — “are quite taboo to share. But I think in this day and age, with everything that’s going on, I think what’s most important is to let people know that you’re not alone and that for those of us who have been through the gauntlet in a certain matter, to share what we’ve learned along the way to try to get through this thing called life.”
In the meantime, Will Smith appears to be unbothered by the public response. On Sunday, the Oscar-winning actor posted a video of him on a boat trip. The video was captioned “Notifications off :),” and Pinkett Smith commented below it with two laughing emojis.
