# Jada Pinkett Smith (EXCLUSIVE): “I just wanted to stay ALIVE until 4pm!”, “Me & Will Are NOT Together”, “Tupac Kissed Me TWICE!”

- **Show:** The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
- **Published:** 16 Oct 2023
- **Source:** https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/1390/claritaspod.com/measure/p.podderapp.com/2544644999/mgln.ai/e/1651/episode.flightcast.com/bnuoeushi9j5d65opfk2dkwc.mp3
- **Transcript:** https://podcasts.opennash.com/shows/diary-of-a-ceo/jada-pinkett-smith-exclusive-i-just-wanted-to-stay-alive-until-4pm-me-will-are-n-efa7b1/
- **Provider:** OpenNash Podcasts (machine-generated)

## In brief

Jada Pinkett Smith argues that her toughness, fearlessness and constant striving were defences built in childhood, not signs of strength. Raised by addicted parents who, she says, put drugs before her, she looked for safety in street life, then in Hollywood and marriage. None of it healed the sense of being unlovable. Real peace, she says, required surrender and facing her own wounds.

The episode moves from childhood survival to apparent success and then to collapse. Jada describes teenage drug dealing, her friendship with Tupac, her marriage to Will Smith, and a period when she was suicidal despite having 'everything'. The tension is between looking fine outwardly and being in pain inwardly. She says healing came through therapy, ayahuasca, owning her part in conflicts, and learning that no one else can make her happy.

## Key insights

1. **Parental addiction taught her she wasn't a priority** Jada says her parents were her 'first mirrors' and drugs came first for them, so she grew up feeling unworthy. That feeling pushed her to find security on her own, first in the streets and later in achievement.
2. **Street life offered her security her home lacked** She says the neighbourhood's role models were hustlers, not doctors or lawyers, so selling drugs looked like a way to build protection and independence. It nearly got her killed at 17, when she was robbed at gunpoint.
3. **A hard exterior helped her survive but blocked connection** She says her tough, 'no fucks to give' attitude worked in Baltimore but made people in Hollywood wary of her. She still has to manage that default today, because it keeps her from the connections she wants.
4. **Success did not fix her despair; self-hatred was the problem** At 39 she felt 'spiritually bankrupt' despite fame, a marriage and a family, and she planned to die in a car crash at Big Sur. She says she found the cycle of self-hatred during ayahuasca ceremonies, and recovery meant surrender and looking inward.
5. **Neither partner can make the other happy** Jada says she poured herself into Will's dreams hoping to get connection in return, and she resented it when that didn't happen. She now says Will's way (working hard to provide) and hers (presence) both mattered, and that balancing them took three decades.

## Questions this episode answers

### Why did Jada Pinkett Smith sell drugs as a teenager?

She says she couldn't depend on anyone at home, so she wanted money, power and protection she controlled herself. In her neighbourhood the hustlers were the people who seemed to have a good life.

### What happened when Jada had two guns pointed at her?

At 17 she was selling drugs from an apartment door when someone set her up. Two men kicked in the door, pointed 9 mm pistols at her and took her money, jewellery and stash, then let her live. She says the leader later told her it was because she was 'too pretty'.

### Were Jada and Tupac ever a couple?

No. They met on the first day at the Baltimore School for the Arts and became best friends. The two times they kissed felt wrong to both of them, so their bond stayed emotional and intellectual, not physical.

### Why did Jada say she was looking for a cliff to drive off?

Around age 39 she felt deeply unhappy despite her outward success, and she was ashamed because everyone thought she had everything. She planned to drive off a cliff at Big Sur and make it look like an accident so her kids wouldn't think she had taken her own life.

### How did Jada say she began to heal?

She says she got therapy and medication earlier, and later did ayahuasca (a plant-based psychedelic used in ceremonies) after her son Jaden's friends described it. She says it showed her how deep her self-hatred ran, and she now stresses surrender to a higher power.

## Facts

- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:04:32]: "I mean, my mom was 17, right? 1718, She was 17 when she was pregnant. I think she was 18 by the time she had me."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:07:15]: "he just said, he said, Look, I'm a I'm an addict and a criminal and I can't be your father."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:08:35]: "I think my 1st professional gig was like, seven years old, as one of Madame Bon Bon's children in the Nutcracker."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:15:36]: "heroin at that time. And so you, you can't, you can't negotiate with that, it's either you wanna get help, you know,"
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:20:35]: "I had to be 17, 17, 17 years old, because that was my senior year of high school."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:20:56]: "I had, uh, posted up in this in the projects, in this apartment on the bottom floor, where I would sell drugs out of the window or through the door of that particular apartment."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:21:30]: "the person who led that robbery ended up killing two drug dealers. Um, two weeks or a month after, put him in a, uh, put him in a trunk, shot the trunk up and, uh, murdered two guys."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:23:17]: "I asked him, I said, You know, why'd you just leave me there? like? and he said, You were too pretty."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:27:24]: "how Warren Beatty, bless him, he was probably one of the 1st people that was just like, Hey, you're in Hollywood now."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:31:56]: "1st day of school, Baltimore School for the Arts. And um, I. As soon as I walk in, he's holding court, he's holding court"
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:33:28]: "I'm like, Okay, Pac, just kiss me, and he kisses me, and it's the most disgusting kiss between us both."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:46:23]: "So I auditioned for Fresh Prince. I think it was the 2nd year to play one of his girlfriends. And they were like, you're too short."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:46:54]: "So he flew in to North Carolina to meet me and I was like, Nah, I'm gonna do movies now."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:47:37]: "I knew like I had the protection of Debbie Allen on a different world, right?"
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:54:25]: "went to see a psychiatrist, they put me on um, Prozac, and I, I started therapy."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:55:30]: "And so I bought a farmhouse, I bought a little farmhouse on. I wanna say it was about six acres, might six or nine acres, if I remember correctly"
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:56:15]: "he had just Sheree had just sent him divorce papers, and um, he decides to call me."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [0:57:28]: "That is why I wanna commit myself to you, I wanna marry you."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [1:01:05]: "we had a we had a huge fight, huge. It was one of the biggest fights we had ever had."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [1:08:49]: "we feel as though she, um, had a misdiagnosis. She had some kind of thyroid disorder that really, um, disrupted her psyche."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [1:09:45]: "And, uh, she ended up jumping off her mother's balcony and committed. She committed suicide."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [1:12:43]: "I have a beautiful friendship with, um, Lauren London, and she is the widow of Nipsey Hussle."
- **Steven Bartlett** [1:16:15]: "And I think there's this professor called Professor, I think it's called Professor John Gottman, who studied couples and tried to figure out why they end up in divorce."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [1:18:57]: "And so, yeah, it took Will and I three decades."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [1:30:36]: "Big Sur, I knew exactly the route to drive, and it's this really narrow route, and sometimes it gets really foggy there at night."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [1:33:12]: "Um, his friend's father did ayahuasca, and they happened to be talking about it, and they talked to me about it."
- **Jada Pinkett Smith** [1:36:30]: "Will wasn't ready for the world to know that we weren't together and that we were living separate lives."

## Transcript

**[0:00:00] Ad read:** This episode is sponsored by Asana.

**[0:00:02] Steven Bartlett:** Let me, uh, admit something to you. I'm a little bit messy. I have got ADHD and sometimes I forget things. I'll put something in Google Drive, I'll put something on my desktop, it's all over the shop. And I can't imagine how much that is costing me as an entrepreneur or as a creative. I never thought of this as a project management problem, I just thought of it as a me problem. So let me give you a window into my fiancee Melanie and how she operates.

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**[0:01:15] Steven Bartlett:** As a founder, building a business when I was in my early 20s, I think I always had a deep sense of imposter syndrome. Because there was something that I wasn't good at, and that thing was finances. Finance and understanding your financial position as a small business is the great enabler of all of your dreams. I was running from it until I discovered a platform called zero. zero is an accounting and financial management platform specifically for small businesses, and it brings accounting, payments, payroll and analytics all into one place.

**[0:01:44] Steven Bartlett:** Even for people that don't love doing finances, zero wants to do the financial work for you. But its core ambition is to go beyond keeping the financial record, because zero wants to help you understand what's happening in your business. And increasingly, and this is maybe the most important thing, is help you make decisions. Finally, we have a partner who can enable us in a simple way for those people that are both left brain or right brain and enable our dreams.

**[0:02:09] Steven Bartlett:** You can learn more about Zero by going to zero. Com. Thank you to zero, thank you for sponsoring this podcast, but also thank you for helping me to scale my business. As somebody that, quite frankly, has never loved finances that much,

**[0:02:19] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I was in a cycle of self hatred and it was just a really dark time. I want out. And I knew I had to make it look like an accident, cause I did not want my kids to think that I had committed suicide.

**[0:02:39] Speaker 6:** Please welcome Jada Pinkett Smith.

**[0:02:42] Steven Bartlett:** Jada, I knew you as a Hollywood actress. I never knew you were the daughter of two drug addicted parents and a teenage drug dealer yourself on the streets of Baltimore.

**[0:02:51] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I really thought I was gonna be the next big time female drug dealer. I was absolutely fearless. But getting two 9 mm pointed at you,

**[0:02:58] Steven Bartlett:** They pointed two guns at you,

**[0:03:00] Jada Pinkett Smith:** that's a big wake up call.

**[0:03:01] Steven Bartlett:** but what happened?

**[0:03:02] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Somebody set me up and then I had to always have this tough exterior. Now, as I'm dismantling my defenses, I'm in a really raw place.

**[0:03:14] Steven Bartlett:** The Holy Slap? What happened?

**[0:03:15] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I knew I was gonna get blamed, but like, it was insane.

**[0:03:19] Steven Bartlett:** You say protection is your love language. Did you see that as a act of love? The entanglement conversation? We broke up

**[0:03:26] Speaker 5:** And then what did you do, Jada?

**[0:03:28] Jada Pinkett Smith:** my mother, my kids, they were like, how could you do this?

**[0:03:32] Steven Bartlett:** Do you regret putting that out?

**[0:03:34] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Honestly?

**[0:03:35] Steven Bartlett:** I've got this wonderful picture that I found

**[0:03:38] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Oh, I know that picture. Do you know why this is relevant? Yeah, I lost them back to back. Jada. Yes,

**[0:04:00] Steven Bartlett:** I always believe that in order to understand someone, you have to understand their context. And having read through the entirety of your book, there was this line that stood out to me, which I think might be might. Summarize the most important part of your earliest context, which is when I go in search of the origins of my broken heart. It is the sense of not being the priority to the two people who gave me life. That creates a fracture in my feeling of worth.

**[0:04:29] Steven Bartlett:** Why did you write that line?

**[0:04:32] Jada Pinkett Smith:** because it's true, you know, it's like our parents are like our 1st mirrors. And so my parents were really young when they had me. I mean, my mom was 17, right? 1718, She was 17 when she was pregnant. I think she was 18 by the time she had me. So youth on top of addiction. And I just realized, you know, as I was going through my life in different therapeutic settings, I was like, oh, wow. Like, the 1st mirror I had was kind of nonexistent in a way, because drugs were my parents priority, you know, during my upbringing.

**[0:05:19] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And so I didn't really get the reflection of feeling like a priority to the people who brought me into the world. Now, thank goodness, my grandmother came into the picture, you know, and she really, she was a a beautiful, powerful mirror for me that, you know, even to my, you know, is still a mirror for me to this day. Um, where I could see myself, I could see the beauty of myself, I could see my gifts and my talents was through her and what she was reflecting back to me.

**[0:05:54] Jada Pinkett Smith:** But um, I think it's important that I think it's important, if it's possible for children to feel that sense of, um, that sense of importance, that sense of priority from their parents.

**[0:06:16] Steven Bartlett:** I? I had an air of sort of loneliness as I read through the pages. This kind of lonely young girl who was searching to be recognized and loved, and to someone to sort of hold her hand and guide her through those early years. And other than in your grandmother's garden, with your grandmother, it it found like that place of home was never, was never really there.

**[0:06:40] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, I definitely had it with my grandmother. Now, once she passed, that's when I took to the streets to, like, figure out finding my home, finding my tribe, finding my power, finding my identity, finding my purpose, finding my worth. Yeah, Your dad, Rob, hm, hm, yeah,

**[0:07:09] Steven Bartlett:** he, um, he took you for a walk one day and explained to you why he couldn't be your father.

**[0:07:15] Jada Pinkett Smith:** he did. I was seven and um, he just said, he said, Look, I'm a I'm an addict and a criminal and I can't be your father. And I was like, now, mind you, he hadn't really been in my life that much anyway. I didn't really know he wasn't present in my in my life enough for me to even know what it was like to have a father. But what I did appreciate in that moment was like, Wow, just thank you, thank you for, like, being honest.

**[0:07:47] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Now. I didn't realize at that time, cause I was so young, how that would affect my relationships with men ongoing. And, you know, as an adult woman, um, but yeah, in that moment, I was just like, Thank you, somebody is like, being honest with me, I'm not crazy. Something is absolutely not right here. And he's letting me know what that is, and he's saying, Hey, I'm gonna keep my distance, you know?

**[0:08:19] Steven Bartlett:** Ten years old, twelve, thirteen years old. What does Jada think she's gonna be when she grows up?

**[0:08:25] Jada Pinkett Smith:** At ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, I, I definitely was like, I wanted to be an artist, definitely wanted to be an actress.

**[0:08:34] Steven Bartlett:** You wanted to be an actress,

**[0:08:35] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, I did, I did, I wanted to be an actress. I started very young, I was doing theater. Um, I think my 1st professional gig was like, seven years old, as one of Madame Bon Bon's children in the Nutcracker. Um, and then I was in, you know, different theatrical programs in the summertime and what have you? And then the, uh. When I got the opportunity to join Twigs, which prepared you for the Baltimore School for the Arts, I joined that after school program.

**[0:09:09] Jada Pinkett Smith:** So arts has always been a big part of my life,

**[0:09:13] Steven Bartlett:** do you know why? Cause? When I, as I read through those early years of your life, it seemed that acting was doing something. The the performance, the being on stage, the the validation, I think it was giving you, was doing something for you that it might not have done for someone else who hadn't walked the steps you had walked up until that point.

**[0:09:32] Jada Pinkett Smith:** the validation, but also an outlet, it was a real outlet for me, where I was able to express certain feelings that I didn't feel like I had the permission to express at home. Um, and um, it was a huge, it was a huge outlet for me in that way. I mean, to the point that my theater teachers would often tell me, Um, you know, they'd try to steer me into, like, more, why? don't you try more comedic roles?

**[0:10:07] Jada Pinkett Smith:** You know, I was always going for the very dramatic, very highly emotional, you know, uh, roles, um, and my, I just remember my theater teachers always trying to guide me into diversifying the monologues that I would choose. Uh, for for my pieces to work on in class.

**[0:10:31] Steven Bartlett:** I read, um, I read some books. I think one of them was called The Body Keeps the Score, which talks about the role that acting can play as sort of a therapy. And it's so. It seems to not be a coincidence that the amount of actors I've sat here and spoke with who have pretty, um, unthinkable early childhood experiences, domestic violence in the home, et cetera. That then find acting as an outlet for a form of escapism, almost escaping the identity, embodying a different role.

**[0:11:00] Jada Pinkett Smith:** absolutely, totally agree, totally agree.

**[0:11:06] Steven Bartlett:** As I read it in your story, I was like, not another one.

**[0:11:09] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yes, another one. It's classic. Yeah,

**[0:11:14] Steven Bartlett:** And I. I reflect on some of the words you wrote in the early part of the book, where you're talking about your mother and your father. There being domestic violence in the home at an early age. Your mother running out of the house, dropping you on the floor because Rob had punched her, I believe your father had punched her. These are stories, I guess you've heard after the fact from your mother, but I guess you believe those moments leave a mark.

**[0:11:43] Jada Pinkett Smith:** absolutely. I mean, my mother talks about it to this day and will choke up, she'll, you know, cry. It's like, it's, it's. You don't get over things in the sense of like, it's forgotten. You know, you learn to cope with it, you heal in a certain manner, but it still can leave a certain imprint upon you. Um, and even hearing those stories are not easy, you know, even as an adult. Because she didn't really give me the details until I was, I mean, my kids were daggone near adults.

**[0:12:16] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Before she shared with me the level of violence that she dealt with with my dad.

**[0:12:22] Steven Bartlett:** Did it help you understand yourself? Did it help you connect dots?

**[0:12:28] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I don't know if it helped me understand myself as much as it helped me understand my mother, and then that helped me understand a lot of how her journey has imprinted upon me in a certain manner. You know, so I guess it does, if you take, you know, through through my mother and her journey, it helped me understand her journey, which has affected me. So, yeah, I guess you could say that it helped me understand myself more.

**[0:13:00] Steven Bartlett:** I say that cause I start with, Um, you know, Gable, Mathe, Gable, Gable, Mathe

**[0:13:03] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, I do. in the picture, Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yes,

**[0:13:05] Steven Bartlett:** he was the he's the person that opened my eyes to the fact that even the things that occurred when we are babies, we interpret them to mean, um, certain things about ourselves. And he says, babies are incredibly selfish. So, for example, if the parents are arguing, the baby will interpret that as reflection of them. And I think about the early context that I think I read about in your story, but also that appears in mine, and how I interpreted that to mean that I wasn't enough in some way.

**[0:13:34] Steven Bartlett:** Which is a real through line throughout your story.

**[0:13:36] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, for sure, uh. And I think that probably is probably more subconscious, unconscious than that which the abuse of drugs and how that reflected to me that I wasn't worthy in a certain manner. That why is it that this particular substance has more power over, you know, has more attention, more power, more influence than me? To the point that your father will tell you, I'm relinquishing my parental rights. Because I'd rather be a criminal and a drug addict than try to get my shit together.

**[0:14:25] Jada Pinkett Smith:** For you is the way I interpreted that. And at the same time, was like, just thank you for being honest, instead of sitting up here, pretending like you're doing something different. Thank you, you know, which a lot of people would do.

**[0:14:43] Steven Bartlett:** Tony was he your? He was your, your mother's 1st part partner after Rob,

**[0:14:49] Jada Pinkett Smith:** No, she, he was her 1st husband. 1st husband, okay, Yeah, after Rob,

**[0:14:54] Steven Bartlett:** and he seemed to be a pretty solid father he's a solid. Yeah, figure.

**[0:14:56] Jada Pinkett Smith:** he was, he was indeed.

**[0:14:59] Steven Bartlett:** It's it. This guy comes into your life and plays the role of a father by all accounts. He seems to do a pretty good job and seems to love on you in a way that is sufficient for a child. But then he too vanishes out of your life, Makes a exit, makes an exit.

**[0:15:19] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, which I understand, you know, as an adult now, looking back and and looking at the circumstances, you know, he did the best that he could. He's a man that was trying to get his life together, and my mother was was deep in her addiction and

**[0:15:35] Steven Bartlett:** So addiction to.

**[0:15:36] Jada Pinkett Smith:** heroin at that time. And so you, you can't, you can't negotiate with that, it's either you wanna get help, you know, um, or you have to. Sometimes you have to make clean breaks. I know that now as an adult, and you don't always know how to play the middle, you know, and so I get it.

**[0:16:04] Steven Bartlett:** What does that do to you? As a young, a young woman who's trying to figure out what, where safety is,

**[0:16:08] Jada Pinkett Smith:** It's devastating, it's devastating. I mean, I completely abandoned feeling like I could depend on anyone, which is why I just took to the streets. I was like, you know what, I'm gonna figure out how to make money, gain power and create a situation where I can protect myself and my mother. And to make sure, just in case she doesn't make it, I'ma be okay.

**[0:16:39] Steven Bartlett:** you take to the streets? When you say take to the streets, what do you mean by that?

**[0:16:43] Jada Pinkett Smith:** When I would see, you know, the high rollers, the hustlers, I was like, Oh, that's what I want, you know, I want to have the Mercedes, I wanna have big wads of cash in my pocket. I wanna have friends around me that will protect me, and I wanna be able to have security and stability created by my own hands. I don't wanna depend on anybody, not only do I not wanna depend on anybody, I can't depend on anyone.

**[0:17:17] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And so the streets, that's where I saw security, because we didn't have doctors and lawyers, you know, to look upon, you know, like that's the aspiration, right? Because in our neighborhoods, that's what we had, we had hustlers, right? And they had the good life. So you could be a hustler, or you could be a hustler's girlfriend. I wasn't trying to be the girl, I wasn't trying to be the girlfriend, and so I'd look to to that lifestyle.

**[0:17:59] Jada Pinkett Smith:** To offer me the security that I didn't have at home, as an opportunity for me to create that security that I didn't have at home.

**[0:18:10] Steven Bartlett:** Security, protection, safety. These are all words that appear over and over and over again in your book, I know, right, yeah, from childhood to adulthood. Those are the the

**[0:18:27] Jada Pinkett Smith:** that was it.

**[0:18:28] Steven Bartlett:** most, the recurring words. And you, you found that security in part through a lifestyle of drug dealing yourself. Um, which again, I said to you before we started recording, Jada, that I knew of you as a Hollywood actress, you know, that's what I, that's what I knew of you of. I'm not someone that's hugely involved in media or TV or movies, so that's what I thought. I never in my life. I might have thought of you as the daughter of two, um, drug addicted parents who had chosen their addiction over you.

**[0:19:00] Steven Bartlett:** And I never knew that you started dealing drugs when you were very, very young. Were you? Were you not scared dealing drugs in Baltimore? And

**[0:19:09] Jada Pinkett Smith:** you, you don't have time to be scared. That environment was a war zone, right? And so it's like stuff was popping off all the time. So you just get used to a certain level of violence, you get used to a certain level of, um, just vigilance, because that's what you're given, so you just learn to adapt to that kind of environment. So the levels, what? What somebody might consider dangerous for me was just normal. It wasn't like, ooh, I'm going into something crazy here, you know?

**[0:19:49] Jada Pinkett Smith:** It's like, Well, shit, everything's crazy, so what, right? So I look at it now and I go, what in the world, you know? But I have a I'm living a different reality. And that time when I was living that reality, that's what life was and everybody, that's what we were all living.

**[0:20:11] Steven Bartlett:** was there moments that were wake up calls Hell, yeah, when you were dealing drugs?

**[0:20:18] Jada Pinkett Smith:** listen, getting two 9 mm pointed at you at one time, one to your head, that's a that that you would think that's a big wake up call.

**[0:20:26] Steven Bartlett:** Jada, we don't all know what 9 mm is.

**[0:20:28] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Oh, you know, I guns, you know, it's two big guns, you know,

**[0:20:35] Steven Bartlett:** When did that happen?

**[0:20:35] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Glocks. Um, I had to be 17, 17, 17 years old, because that was my senior year of high school.

**[0:20:51] Steven Bartlett:** And what? What was the reason that someone pointed two guns at your head?

**[0:20:56] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I was, I had, uh, posted up in this in the projects, in this apartment on the bottom floor, where I would sell drugs out of the window or through the door of that particular apartment. And somebody set me up to make a long story short, somebody set me up. And um, as I was making the exchange through the door that had the chain on it. Two guys from the side of the door, which I couldn't see, cause I'm looking through the peephole, two guys from the side of the door.

**[0:21:30] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Come around and kick the door in and pull out guns, point them to me and take all my money, my jewelry and stash. And I was really lucky to make it out of that alive, for sure, because the person who led that robbery ended up killing two drug dealers. Um, two weeks or a month after, put him in a, uh, put him in a trunk, shot the trunk up and, uh, murdered two guys. And um, he ended up doing life for that.

**[0:22:14] Jada Pinkett Smith:** But, uh, I could tell as he was leaving, you know you? It's so interesting when you're in moments like that. I can still see his eyes as he's leaving me and how he's making a choice in the moment of what he's gonna do with me. And by the grace of God, he left me there.

**[0:22:40] Steven Bartlett:** Why?

**[0:22:41] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Well, when, and of course, I, you know, my crazy self, because of who, because of the protection that I was under at the time. I called that person. I was like, I just got robbed. He knew exactly, he knew exactly. He's like, I know who this is, don't worry about anything. Um, I was like, I want my shit back, and so we actually, um, that person whose wing I was under. He made for a meeting for us to meet in that area.

**[0:23:17] Jada Pinkett Smith:** A couple of days later, he was like, you're not gonna get your money back, you're not gonna get the drugs back. But maybe there might be some pieces of jewelry of yours that he'll, you know, he hasn't sold yet. And that's. He was exactly right. He had, you know, a couple chains or whatever. And I told, I asked him, I said, You know, why'd you just leave me there? like? and he said, You were too pretty.

**[0:23:38] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And that was the 1st time, and I talk about this in the book. That was the 1st time that I was like, Well, maybe I am pretty, because I was like, maybe I am pretty. Because, you know, he cause this. This was a stone cold killer, and I talk about even when I met him, how he looked like he. He had never felt any kind of love in his life. And I'm just, I. I don't know what kind of crazy nut I was at that time, I was just so.

**[0:24:11] Jada Pinkett Smith:** All I could say is just out of my mind, like I was just in such an alter reality. I, I. I really thought I was gonna be the next Queen Pen 1st of all,

**[0:24:21] Steven Bartlett:** Again? A lot of people don't know what Queen Pen is. Jada

**[0:24:23] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, well, you know, I thought I was gonna be the next, you know, like, big time female drug dealer, you know, and I really had I. I was I. I was crazy. I absolutely was just a nut because I had no fear whatsoever. I was absolutely fearless to be rolling with these wolves like this. And like, it was nothing like, it was absolutely nothing. I think about that today, I think about my daughter, I'm like, what the like?

**[0:24:55] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I don't know all I can, and that's when I know, and I think back on everything that I've been through. I was like, there is a God for sure, there is a God. Cause that dude, for me to even wanna see his face again, was like, I want my shit back. And he had it, he had it for me. He was like, there you go, you know? And so, um, but it prepared me for Hollywood, it prepared me, it prepared me big time, How it prepared me in a way because I was running with killers.

**[0:25:32] Jada Pinkett Smith:** That's it's as simple as that, right? So the Hollywood flex, you know, dudes who were presenting themselves as like these powerful, you know, if you don't do what I say, like, Bruh, honestly, it, it, it just didn't resonate that way for me. I just looked at it, I looked at all of that as just kinda like puppy play.

**[0:26:03] Steven Bartlett:** it didn't resonate with you? But from the words you describe in your book about how you were received in Hollywood, it appears that Hol you didn't resonate with Hollywood either.

**[0:26:14] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, for a while I did not. Yeah, for a minute,

**[0:26:17] Steven Bartlett:** This rough around the edges,

**[0:26:19] Jada Pinkett Smith:** rough around the edges, yeah, because I mean it. It was part of what was refreshing for a lot of people, but it was also the thing that was standoffish, too, right?

**[0:26:30] Steven Bartlett:** what is that?

**[0:26:31] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Um, I think just that, that edge that I came with, that no, you know, having no fucks to give. Basically, it was just like, I'm here to do me what, you know, and I got something to offer. And if you can't see it, well, then that's on you, your loss, you know, just that kind of attitude and just kinda like, you know, I wasn't your prim proper, uh, demure young lady, you know? I was just kinda like, I was just rough, rugged and rambunctious.

**[0:27:08] Steven Bartlett:** It's interesting, isn't it? In life, how a certain type of demeanor or attitude or mindset can help us to survive and thrive in one context. But sometimes we need to figure out how to turn that shit off.

**[0:27:20] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And that's what I had to learn to do.

**[0:27:22] Steven Bartlett:** Cause you weren't in survival anymore.

**[0:27:24] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I wasn't in survival anymore, you know, and I talk about this in the book, you know how Warren Beatty, bless him, he was probably one of the 1st people that was just like, Hey, you're in Hollywood now. Hey, I get it, but why don't you allow people to see some other aspects? That charm you have, that smile you have? Like, let's take that, let's take that chip off your shoulder a little bit, you know? And he was the 1st person really to talk to me in a way that wasn't like making me wrong, right?

**[0:28:01] Jada Pinkett Smith:** He didn't make me wrong for being who I was. He was just like, there's so much more to you, let people see that, you know? And that was the 1st time I actually listened, cause he didn't make me wrong. And I bet you, Warren has no idea that how, how much that conversation and the time that he spent with me really meant to me. It was really awesome because he was, he was so respectful and he really honored where I sat and where.

**[0:28:38] Jada Pinkett Smith:** But you, you didn't get that often in Hollywood. It was just like, No, you gotta change this, you gotta do this different, you, you'll never get jobs like that. I was just like, Well, then I won't work, cause, you know, I was very rebellious sometimes in that way. Um, but yeah, he really, that really stuck with me. And from that day on, I just started on the journey of trying to figure out how to not lose myself.

**[0:29:07] Jada Pinkett Smith:** But also feel, find a way to feel safe to take that approach. Because, like I said, I was around wolves all the time, so I had to always be on guard. I had to always have this tough exterior, I always had to carry the attitude like, I'm not the one you don't wanna come over here.

**[0:29:37] Steven Bartlett:** It's interesting, cause when you putting up such a barrier to defend yourself, um, can often make us quite hard to form connection. And and the reason I pause there is cause I'm thinking about what you said in the book. After Tony left you, who was your mother's new husband? He left abruptly, abruptly after playing the role of of a father. And you said the line about, um, the rejection was brutal, something broke inside me, my grief was oceanic.

**[0:30:11] Steven Bartlett:** I put a on a li, I put it on a library shelf labeled Unlovable, and I tried to leave it there. That's an another word that comes up over and over again, this word unlovable, unlovable. And it's funny, cause when people are, when they feel unlovable themselves, they do often put up these walls, which make them. It's almost like self fulfilling, it's, you know, and that's the essence of what I felt in Jada. When she arrives in Hollywood as this person who's got this sort of little bit of a tough exterior.

**[0:30:37] Steven Bartlett:** But not because, not because she's not, you know,

**[0:30:40] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, not because, uh, you know, it was really just it was. It was so many things I was trying to protect.

**[0:30:47] Steven Bartlett:** it was defense, not offense, would I say, Yeah,

**[0:30:49] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, it was. And and I still to this day, you know, people like, you know, I still to this day have to like, manage that. Because it's just it's just in me, it's just part of me. It's something because it was such a um, it was, you know it. It was something that was built at the foundation, you know, it's in my DNA.

**[0:31:16] Steven Bartlett:** default, isn't it?

**[0:31:16] Jada Pinkett Smith:** It's, yeah, it's my default. So it's like, and I, I do it well, I can, just you won't know anything that's going on. But like you said, it's like, well, then you don't give yourself an opportunity to make the connections that you really wanna have.

**[0:31:31] Steven Bartlett:** And you're gonna be misunderstood.

**[0:31:33] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Stood, Yeah, all the time, which that is like, that has been my life, too, just misunderstood

**[0:31:43] Steven Bartlett:** Another thing I learned from reading the book, which is gonna shock you, that I didn't know. But this shows how little I am tuned into media and Hollywood

**[0:31:49] Jada Pinkett Smith:** good for you.

**[0:31:50] Steven Bartlett:** and all that is your relationship with Tupac. He comes over, introduces himself.

**[0:31:56] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah. 1st day of school, Baltimore School for the Arts. And um, I. As soon as I walk in, he's holding court, he's holding court, he's a C, like he's a charismatic from day one, he's holding court. And I'm like, who's who's that peanut head dude over there, you know? And I'm coming in, I'm rocking, you know, I'm Jada, I'm walking in. I got the rat tail, I got the fly clothes, you know. And he turns and we our eyes just meet and I'm like, Oh, and then, you know, I, I'm, I'm gonna hold my court, you know what I'm saying?

**[0:32:38] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And so then he comes over, you know, I'm my, and I'm like, Oh, okay, cool, yeah, whatever. And so he comes over and he's like, Hey, I'm Tupac, and I'm like, Tupac. The name from the gate was just like, I never heard a name like that before. It was such a powerful, different name, and I was like, Tupac. And he had this big smile and I was like, it's not a lot of people that have that kind of like charisma and courage to just walk up on me.

**[0:33:09] Jada Pinkett Smith:** On, just like, I'm Tupac, I'm, you know what I mean, you need to know me, you know? And from the f, right, from there, inseparable. We became the best of friends from that moment on, we just connected. It was as if we already knew each other. It's crazy,

**[0:33:23] Steven Bartlett:** P. People will find it hard to believe that at that age, in that environment, it wasn't a romantic thing.

**[0:33:28] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I know people have had a really hard time, you know, understanding that Pac, and I had a hard time understanding why it just didn't. We didn't have it. And I talk about in the book, you know, that being on the back porch of my house and we're like, having this discussion, I'm like, Okay, Pac, just kiss me, and he kisses me, and it's the most disgusting kiss between us both. I mean, he pulled back, just like, and I pulled back, and I was like, See, dummy, you know?

**[0:34:02] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And from there, it was just like, and then there was one more time he kissed me and it was just like, and I talk about that in in jail. When I go to see him in Danamora, that's a whole nother thing. And once again, it's just like, dude doesn't work. But throughout our relationship, we definitely had this beautiful closeness that was really intimate, but never physically intimate. Lot of emotional intimacy, a lot of, um, intellectual intimacy.

**[0:34:48] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Um, we just knew how to reach each other in ways that was very difficult. We knew how to get around each other's walls. And we didn't get offended when we would fall into our defaults of defense, which could be pretty fierce between the two of us. He was quite, uh, a powerhouse, and so was I. We could be very challenging when we got riled up, so arguments, we were very passionate. But because we were one and the same in that way, we kinda understood that language, like, Oh, this joke, you know what I mean?

**[0:35:30] Jada Pinkett Smith:** So we didn't get offended a lot until one particular time, which comes later in the book.

**[0:35:36] Steven Bartlett:** Yeah, when you come from the same place, or you know the origin stories, you don't have that misunderstood thing to talk about, cause you understand I just understood him, context.

**[0:35:44] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I just understood him, and he understood me, he really got me, and he really knew how to pull my coattails in ways that a lot of people didn't, and same for me with him. I just knew how to reach him in ways that, and and that had everything to. And I think because we didn't have that kind of, I think sometimes physical intimacy can really get in the way, you know? Um, and I think that God just made it that way, in which God was like, No, no, no, I need you to to be I.

**[0:36:21] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I, I got a plan, so that's not part of the plan.

**[0:36:25] Steven Bartlett:** Did you know? Did you, in your heart of hearts, know that Tupac was going to go on to do what he did?

**[0:36:35] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I knew he was gonna go to do something. I did not know he would become the Tupac we know him to be, but I knew he was gonna do something great.

**[0:36:46] Steven Bartlett:** In hindsight, when you look back at who he was, the character traits, the ingredients that were within him, why did he go on to do what he did? What was it about him?

**[0:36:58] Jada Pinkett Smith:** He wore his heart on his sleeve and he could join you, and so what I mean by joining you is that he's not talking at you, he's talking with you. He had a way of being able to speak about subject matters that he's gonna sit with you in your broken heart and speak to you from there. Because he knows that broken heart, he's lived that broken heart. So, and whether it's your broken heart, whether it's your rage.

**[0:37:38] Jada Pinkett Smith:** But he just knew how to penetrate those emotional spaces in people, and that's what I mean by joining you. He knew how to join you emotionally in so many different verticals of emotion. You know, he was supremely intelligent as well, he was so authentic also, and so raw that I think that was really refreshing as well. He gave you him and he was unapologetic. So he's gonna give you his intelligence, he's gonna give you his fear, he's gonna give you his pain, he's gonna give you his anger, you know, he's gonna give you his sympathy, he's gonna give you his understanding, right?

**[0:38:26] Jada Pinkett Smith:** But it was coming from that, that heart space, that that that real space within. It wasn't a gimmick, it wasn't like, Oh, I'm gonna talk about this because this is what's hot. No, you know, right, wrong or indifferent. He gave you his truth, and some truths people could rock with with them, and some truths you couldn't. You know what I mean? And um, but regardless, it was what was real for him at that time, he was always authentic.

**[0:39:00] Steven Bartlett:** But it's not easy. It comes with a cost, right?

**[0:39:01] Jada Pinkett Smith:** It comes with a cost.

**[0:39:04] Steven Bartlett:** Because it's almost the opposite of conformity, in a way, authenticity.

**[0:39:07] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, exactly. And he was a rebel in that way. And I think people really, uh, at at at points in his career, you know, he could speak, he would speak for the community, and then at points of his career, he would speak from that. That really intimate place of woundedness. Dear mama, Yeah, you know, there's so many of us related to nobody was speaking to us in that way. That could. That could go from ambitions of a writer to shed so many tears to a soldier's story.

**[0:39:48] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Come on, come on, you know, to, I mean, he had, so he could speak to us from so many different angles.

**[0:40:01] Steven Bartlett:** that is just the evidence of authenticity, isn't it? Because people are multifaceted in their nature, no one is just ambition or a high life. We are all all the shades,

**[0:40:08] Jada Pinkett Smith:** or all the shades, right?

**[0:40:10] Steven Bartlett:** but rap rap music, especially back then, was very narrowing. It was like, this is how to be a rapper, so someone willing to be authentic. It's funny, I've seen this over and over again. They they are the most resonant people in the world because they represent us in a way that a lot of others aren't brave enough to represent us. And that's also what vulnerability does. That's what you do as well in this book, well, thank you, because because you're willing to lay it all out.

**[0:40:32] Steven Bartlett:** We can relate to many people, will be able to relate to many parts of you. And you know, without books like this, we get narrow views, and those narrow views, I mean, those are crafted by other people, and they're the least relatable. Now

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**[0:43:07] Steven Bartlett:** It was right.

**[0:43:09] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, and we're all so multi dimensional.

**[0:43:12] Steven Bartlett:** You move to LA. you're working three jobs, you start trying to climb into the ladder of Hollywood. Um, at this point, you you meet a certain fresh prince, Yeah, the Savior Prince, the Savior Prince. And I was quite shocked by. I think of, I think of Will Smith, I think charismatic, he's a good looking guy. You didn't seem to think that when

**[0:43:37] Jada Pinkett Smith:** no, no, not at 1st. Yeah,

**[0:43:44] Steven Bartlett:** what did you think at 1st?

**[0:43:45] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I mean, he was the fresh prince. I was like, Okay, he's cool, you know? But I was like, not, not, not the guy for me, you know,

**[0:43:54] Steven Bartlett:** Why was he too soft?

**[0:43:56] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I wouldn't say he, I wouldn't say soft, I would just say that he didn't seem deep. And I talk about this in the book, how at that time a troubled dude seemed deep to me versus just troubled. It's like, stay away from the troubles, right? And so he wasn't troubled, it didn't seem to be right, and so I was like, that's not deep. Like, he just seems like, you know, just didn't draw me in that way.

**[0:44:33] Steven Bartlett:** You don't feel the same way anymore, though, do you? About the TR, the, uh, the deep parts, the Oh, no, he's actually, the troubled part, I think I read this book.

**[0:44:40] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, yeah. Don't judge a book by its cover, that that's, that's what Will Smith told taught me. It was like, not to judge a book by its cover. And I learned that, you know, years later, when we had an opportunity to have, you know, we had a mutual friend. And so we were able to share some time at Jerry's Deli over a meal. And I got to see a totally different side of him. Dwayne Dwayne Martin Yeah,

**[0:45:07] Steven Bartlett:** you went to that Jacket potato place.

**[0:45:08] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, the baked potato. hm hm.

**[0:45:10] Steven Bartlett:** Yeah, what was it about? What did you see in Will that night? I found it really interesting because one of the things that you described seeing in him was someone who quite was quite adamant in taking over the world.

**[0:45:20] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah. He was so ambitious, you know, and in such a beautiful way. He had big dreams, big dreams, and um, and he was so joyful, he was really joyful, but grounded, and that was the part that I missed, he was grounded. It was like he'd been through some things and he was really intelligent. So he's what you call, you know, he could go from the hood to the White House and everywhere in between, right? And I always find people like that fascinating, that have a wide range within them, places that they can go.

**[0:46:15] Jada Pinkett Smith:** You know, you drop Will anywhere and he's gonna figure it out and fit in.

**[0:46:21] Steven Bartlett:** He'd asked you to be his on screen girlfriend, hadn't he?

**[0:46:23] Jada Pinkett Smith:** He, Okay, yeah. So I auditioned for Fresh Prince. I think it was the 2nd year to play one of his girlfriends. And they were like, you're too short. I was like, all right, cool, right? And so that was the 1st time that I actually met Will. I came out of the the casting and he was, you know, coming into the casting office or about to leave or something. And he was like, Hey, and I was like, Yeah, what's up, you know?

**[0:46:54] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I was like, no need to talk to me. They already said, I'm I'm short, you know, so I'm on my way. And then, and I think I, I think I was probably about 20. Um, and he wanted, he, he wanted me to play his, you know, his girlfriend as a series regular. So he flew in to North Carolina to meet me and I was like, Nah, I'm gonna do movies now. And he was like, all right, cool.

**[0:47:22] Steven Bartlett:** That's a that's a bold, that's a big rejection to reject the fresh Prince of Bel Air. When he says you can be his sort of recurring on screen girlfriend in a hit show, and you say TV's not for me, I'm gonna focus on movies. Big call

**[0:47:37] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Well, I had just done it, I'd just come off of a different world, and I knew like I had the protection of Debbie Allen on a different world, right? And so when I wanted to make moves, Debbie was there to help me. That's not to say that I would have that same assistance on Fresh Prince. And at that time, they locked you in, you couldn't do anything. You know what I mean, they have you for six years, they got you locked and I.

**[0:48:06] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I just didn't wanna be locked like that, and so I really wanted to try my hand at doing movies. And then Dwayne Martin, when I turned Will down, Dwayne Martin got on me, cause he felt the same way you did. It was just like, it's financial security, how could you let something like this go? And you know, who's to say when your next starring Mo, you know, role is gonna come in? And blah blah.

**[0:48:31] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And I was like, But I'm so glad that I didn't take that role, cause I tell you what if I had taken that role. Will and I would not have been married, and I wouldn't have had Jane and Willow and Ben Trey's bonus mom. My life would've been totally different. you sure I'm positive, Yeah,

**[0:48:48] Steven Bartlett:** as in, you're sure that you positive, wouldn't have gotten married

**[0:48:51] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I'm positive.

**[0:48:53] Steven Bartlett:** because you would've seen the red, you would've seen the red flags,

**[0:48:56] Jada Pinkett Smith:** uh, listen, no, yeah, no.

**[0:49:01] Steven Bartlett:** right? Earthquakes are hard to predict. Sometimes you feel tremors ahead of time, often they come on suddenly. And in your early 20s, you had your 1st, maybe not even your 1st. But what you describe in the book as your 1st breakdown, personal earthquake, when you're driving down the street one day. Mental health and psychiatry have come a long way since then. Um, I, I. I would guess that at the time, many people wouldn't have been able to tell you what that was.

**[0:49:32] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I had no idea what was going on. Me just thinking about that moment, just it's like, Um, I was so overwhelmed, you know? And I was like, I, I didn't know what was going on with me. And it came over me in an instant. I was fine. One moment, I'm turning my car around to meet a friend on the corner that, you know, I saw to say and to say hello to her. And all of a sudden, my body's shaking, all these emotions come over me and I, I'm like, I'm starting to.

**[0:50:09] Jada Pinkett Smith:** It's like waterfall of like tears, and I, I'm like, and I have no idea, like my brain is not catching up to what is happening with my body. All I know is that this waterfall, this volcano of emotions. It was fear, anger, despair. And I was like, I, I got. And she was looking at me, like, Are you okay? and I was like, I, I don't know, I, you know. And I get in the car and I'm trying to drive and I'm like, you can't drive, pull over, and then I pull over.

**[0:50:48] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And then I just remember feeling terrified to just let it go, and I let it go. And then I'm like, I wanna die, I wanna die. And I remember making it home and all I could do was call my mother and say, you gotta come here, I'm gonna kill myself, you know? And I think about that, and I'm just like, Wow. And my mother was like, she was maybe a year into her sobriety, right? And what a terrifying call to get, like, if I get that call from Willow or Jada or Trey, I'm just, you know, it's like, and um, so she's figuring out because she just started a job at this hospital.

**[0:51:45] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I'm so terrified to be by myself. I call my homegirl Mc Lyte and I tell her, I was like, you gotta come out here. I'm afraid to be alone by myself, I'm gonna do something to myself. And she flies out and so she holds me down until my mother comes. It's a crazy moment.

**[0:52:14] Steven Bartlett:** Have you figured out what, what your body was telling you?

**[0:52:19] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I think my body was telling me that, I think my mind was telling me, Hey, we have some things we gotta pay attention to up here. Enough with let's keep it moving, I'm gonna make it so you're not gonna just be able to keep it moving anymore. You have some things that you gotta pay attention to, some things that need to be addressed. And at the time, like you were just talking about, nobody was talking about mental health at all, and specifically, mental health was considered like a white people thing, Black people don't have mental health issues, right?

**[0:53:11] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And so suicide, for sure, was a white people thing. So I was real confused, I, I felt, really, I felt like something is is has gone really, really, really wrong here. Because nobody else like me feels like this, nobody knows what's going on, and maybe I'm losing my mind, I'm actually going crazy, you know? So it was a scary time.

**[0:53:47] Steven Bartlett:** When I read about that, it sounded to me like you had been, you'd been playing defense for just a little bit too long.

**[0:53:53] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, for sure, for sure,

**[0:53:56] Steven Bartlett:** And that's, I guess, one of the costs of the the toughness, right? The like, as you say, we'll just keep it moving, we just keep we'll just keep it moving. it moving. Yeah, No piece of me, and are they?

**[0:54:05] Jada Pinkett Smith:** no, it's gonna catch you. You can deal with it, or it will deal with you. Those are your choi, those are your two choices.

**[0:54:14] Steven Bartlett:** But you, you did keep it moving, even in that moment, it seemed, it seemed like you, you carried on with the work. Um, I think you were, you were recommended to go and see a psychiatrist, right?

**[0:54:25] Jada Pinkett Smith:** went to see a psychiatrist, they put me on um, Prozac, and I, I started therapy. I started therapy.

**[0:54:34] Steven Bartlett:** But it does still appear that you kept it moving because you, you kept working. You didn't seem to wanna show anybody outside of your sort of inner circle. Hell, no, Why?

**[0:54:44] Jada Pinkett Smith:** absolutely not, because that's what we do. We keep it moving, right? And so I was like, I got the help that I need. I got a doctor and I'm on Prozac. Yeah, Just like right. So I'm like, plaster over Okay, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing and I can't let anybody know. And we're gonna keep this moving because that's what we do.

**[0:55:13] Steven Bartlett:** plaster over cracks.

**[0:55:15] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, we just, yeah. At that time, I'm gonna take a break because, you know, I'm having, I'm depressed. What? At that time, that seemed absolutely ridiculous.

**[0:55:28] Steven Bartlett:** Do you go back to Baltimore?

**[0:55:30] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I did, I went back to Baltimore, um, and cause I was going to continue working, but not live in L. A. anymore. And so I bought a farmhouse, I bought a little farmhouse on. I wanna say it was about six acres, might six or nine acres, if I remember correctly, and it was, um, I was gonna build a life there for myself in a little quiet corner. And, you know, I was like, all right, I'll. If I need to audition, I'll either go to New York or I can just fly back and forth from L.

**[0:56:10] Jada Pinkett Smith:** A.

**[0:56:11] Steven Bartlett:** I heard Will was trying to hit you up at this, this point in your life.

**[0:56:15] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, he hit me up, he had just Sheree had just sent him divorce papers, and um, he decides to call me. And of course, me not knowing anything about marriage, thinking that marriage, you know, breakup over marriage is like breaking up with a boyfriend. He's like, you know, um, where are you? And I'm like, I'm in Baltimore, you know, renovating my house. And he's like, Are you seeing anybody? And I'm like, No, he's like, Good, you're seeing me now.

**[0:56:42] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And I was like, What? Once again, that kind of bold, you know, approach. I was just like, Oh, clutch my pearls a little bit. So he was like, you know, call me when you get back to L. A. So when I got back to L. A. I called him and we went out on our first date.

**[0:57:01] Steven Bartlett:** In and around that time, Pac had been sentenced to Rikers, right? He'd been senten sent to jail for

**[0:57:07] Jada Pinkett Smith:** He'd been sent to at that point in time, he was at Rikers, but then he was on his way to Dannemora.

**[0:57:12] Steven Bartlett:** which is a horrific place where they send terrorists usually. I think the nine eleven, some of the people that were involved with nine eleven or the World Trade Center bombings were sent to Dannemora. Um, while he's in jail,

**[0:57:28] Jada Pinkett Smith:** while he's in jail, what do you have here? Oh yeah, now, as I slip from grace and the world has turned against me. A few claim to have loved for me, but once again, you show your love. After deep reflection and spiritual awakening, I have come to realize the friend, love and soulmate was there all the time. I have not seen or felt from anywhere or anyone, the intensity and loyalty that you have shown me. That is why I wanna commit myself to you, I wanna marry you.

**[0:58:02] Steven Bartlett:** he sends you that letter,

**[0:58:04] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, I. It's much longer letter than that, but that's the words that I put in the book.

**[0:58:10] Steven Bartlett:** a marriage proposal.

**[0:58:12] Jada Pinkett Smith:** That's why he was in Rikers when I went to go see him in Rikers, and Rikers is actually that's a really. Dannemora might be where they put terrorists. Rikers is like, I remember going to see him there, and um, he was in such bad shape, you know? And um, I Rikers I like, Yeah, Rikers was bad. Dannemora, yeah, terrorists are there, but far more humane conditions than I would say Rikers.

**[0:59:13] Steven Bartlett:** It feels it feels like the emotion is still right on the surface with you. When you think back to these these moments in your life,

**[0:59:21] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Oh, yeah, it. It feels like I've just came back from seeing Pac at Rikers and I had to leave him there. It's just like yesterday. But I'm also in a very raw place in my life right now as I'm thawing out, as I'm dismantling my defenses, you know, I call it the thaw out. So I'm, I'm in a really raw place.

**[0:59:48] Steven Bartlett:** obviously Pac was. He gets out of jail and Suge Knight, I mean, talking about timing, I think it was like a week ago or two weeks ago that someone's been convicted for Tupac's murder. A lot of emotions. How did you feel when you heard about the UM conviction? Or that somebody that arrested? Uh, an arrest had been made

**[1:00:09] Jada Pinkett Smith:** um, I was like, I, I was glad that an arrest had been made. This is was someone who we had known had been in the car. He, he had had done some street interviews about it, you know, um, and I was just hoping. I was like, Well, I hope they're bringing him in because we're gonna get some other questions answered. So, you know, my hope is that we'll get more questions answered.

**[1:00:49] Steven Bartlett:** in the book? You question, but then you confirm that pack. Tupac knew how you felt about him when he passed away because you and him hadn't been speaking. And I think there's a really important lesson in in this for all of us.

**[1:01:05] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, yeah, we had a we had a huge fight, huge. It was one of the biggest fights we had ever had. And um, and it was about how he had been living, you know? And, uh, I really at that time, you know, really had to let him know my position that I just felt like, you know, where he was sitting with everything was just. It wasn't gonna end up well, right? And we had a magnanimous. I mean, it was just beyond the two of us just at each other.

**[1:02:17] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Um, and I was just like, fuck that, I'm not calling him this time, he's gonna have to call me. He was way out of line, so I really dug my hills heels in the ground in regards to like, nah, you know, I let my pride, I let my ego come in. I really took for granted that he would be living forever, like he had already survived so much like it never, like I never. I. I looked at Pac as being invincible at this point, you know, cause he survived so much, even so much that people don't know about, you know, um, but just like I say in the book, I'm like, man, don't do it, don't do it, don't, don't,

**[1:03:09] Jada Pinkett Smith:** don't hold on to like that prideful part of yourself, you know, with someone you really care about. Like, No, I mean, you know, he's gonna have to call me. You know, it's like, Nope,

**[1:03:22] Steven Bartlett:** Was that the last time you spoke to him?

**[1:03:24] Jada Pinkett Smith:** that was the last time I spoke to him, that was the last time I spoke to him, that was the last time I spoke to him. And you know what's crazy? It meant absolutely nothing, it meant absolutely nothing. And so that's the test I always have. I'm like, Okay, you're in this beef with somebody. Will this beef matter on your deathbed? And then right away, I'm like, Nope, let me give him a call, you know what I'm saying, that's my, that's my test.

**[1:04:05] Steven Bartlett:** Almost a year later, he gets shot in Las Vegas. You get a phone call while you're filming on set that he's from, I believe, from his mother, um, Phoenix, Shakura, and saying that he's in hospital in a coma. And a few days after that, you find out that he's passed away.

**[1:04:22] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, I was on my way, you know, Faye was like, No rush, he's gonna be fine. Um, he had his fiancee there with him and his family.

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**[1:05:42] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Um, she was like, So, you know, come after your trip in New York, so I was on my way to him. And my girlfriend Fawne came to the door and she, I. I knew as soon as I saw her face that he was gone. Oh, I know that picture. Yep, that was Thanksgiving. He came to L. A. to spend Thanksgiving with me, and we were at one of my friend's house.

**[1:06:20] Steven Bartlett:** You look like brother and sister.

**[1:06:21] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, we look like brother and sister because that's what we were. Yeah, he came to Thanksgiving to spend Thanksgiving with me.

**[1:06:30] Steven Bartlett:** We talked about mental health earlier. Do you do you know how to grieve someone? The loss of someone like like that in your life?

**[1:06:37] Jada Pinkett Smith:** No, I'm still, I'm still, um, working out my relationship with grief. Actually, yeah, I haven't, I haven't really. I. I. Yeah, I'm still working that out.

**[1:06:57] Steven Bartlett:** Because this chapter of your life was loss

**[1:07:02] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Unmourned loss.

**[1:07:03] Steven Bartlett:** chapter twelve of your book. I've got this other picture that I found that I thought was, um, relevant.

**[1:07:12] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Now you do, you know why this is relevant?

**[1:07:14] Steven Bartlett:** I do. Maxine and and Tupac are both In the same in that picture.

**[1:07:17] Jada Pinkett Smith:** picture? Yeah, do you have a tissue? Thanks. You get nice hugs. Um, yeah, that's a sorry. Yeah, I, um, I lost Maxine and Pac back to back. So I'd like to, you know, this picture to be flanked by them.

**[1:08:40] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, I lost them back to back.

**[1:08:44] Steven Bartlett:** Maxine was a good friend of yours. Um, Pac was your brother.

**[1:08:49] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, and she was like, my sister, you know, she, um, I met Maxine on Jason's lyric. And, uh, we became like, super tight. And she lived in Canada, and so she wanted to come to Hollywood and make a career for herself. So I told her that she could come live with me, so she came to to live with me. Um, she, we, we feel as though she, um, had a misdiagnosis. She had some kind of thyroid disorder that really, um, disrupted her psyche.

**[1:09:45] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And, uh, she ended up jumping off her mother's balcony and committed. She committed suicide. Um, so that was really tough,

**[1:10:04] Steven Bartlett:** It seems it seems unimaginable that that chapter and season of your life could be filled with so much loss and so much complicated loss, you know? Because in all of these situations, as you write about in the book, there are reflections where you, you say in the book, if I, you know, you're left with this feeling. If I'd done this, I could. Maybe I should have done it like this, or I wish I'd treat that situation differently.

**[1:10:29] Steven Bartlett:** In hindsight, as we know, is a wonderful thing, isn't it, you know? And I've sat here with a lot of people that have lost a lot of people by by suicide, and they all have the same reflections. They all have that last phone call with the person where they had to put up a boundary. And you know, I've sat here, even in LA. in that chair with. I remember Boz, um, her, her partner at the time, calling and saying, Listen, if you don't come and do this, I'll jump off this bridge.

**[1:10:53] Steven Bartlett:** And then he does. And

**[1:10:54] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, it's like that existential disappointment of just life being what it is. It's like grieving, that grieving. It's like she in a. She went from this like happy person and like having this condition that just right. And so I just sometimes I just go. This is when I just have to, like, reconcile with God. Hm, it's like, Wow, God, like you really be doing some stuff like, you know what I mean, and it's like, and sometimes I get in grief around what life is.

**[1:11:51] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And then I have to make peace with it,

**[1:11:57] Steven Bartlett:** feels, if, if, we think about your story, it feels confusing that God could seemingly hand someone so much, you know, wonderful career, wonderful family, all of those things. But at the same time, and maybe maybe there's a relationship, maybe there's a relationship between the two. Because had you not had the had you not come from where you came from, maybe you wouldn't have had all the wonderful things that you have. But also had you not come from where you came from, maybe you wouldn't have experienced all the loss that you've experienced.

**[1:12:30] Steven Bartlett:** So maybe there's a relationship between the two, because I've not experienced that loss, but I don't come from where you come from. So I didn't lose friends growing up, I didn't lose friends in in in my twenties either. Um,

**[1:12:43] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Having all the different experiences that I've had, as painful as some of them are, it gives me the opportunity to join people in a certain manner, you know, in in really powerful places, you know, like I have a beautiful friendship with, um, Lauren London, and she is the widow of Nipsey Hussle. And because of the loss that I went through with Pac, I could reach out to her and I could go. Hey, anytime you need anything, anytime you need to talk, I'm here.

**[1:13:36] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And Lawrence, quite like me defenses, you know what I mean? But I just kept walking closer and closer. And I just say all that to say that we've been able to meet each other in a certain place because of the type of losses we've had. That can really create beautiful connection. You feel me,

**[1:14:05] Steven Bartlett:** hm, I feel you.

**[1:14:06] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, so there are blessings in pain. You just gotta, you just gotta know that to be true and wait for that door to open, you know? And that's just one, one tiny example of, like, the blessings that I've found in a lot of the loss that I've had in my life in general. You know,

**[1:14:35] Steven Bartlett:** There's almost a an irony or a paradox in the fact that your pain caused a disconnection, but then the pain caused connection.

**[1:14:43] Jada Pinkett Smith:** deep, because heartbreak, there's this beautiful scene in heartbreak, which is like, it breaks you open, breaks you open. And you got two places that you can go. You can go into the deep wells of darkness, or you can go into the deep wells of light. And I've been to both, and I've learned I ain't trying to be over here no more. You know what I mean? And so I always use heartbreak, discontent, pain to help me search for bright light and beautiful blessings within them.

**[1:15:38] Steven Bartlett:** In the opener of the book, you, you describe in the prologue, the life that the world would have seen in over the next sort of ten years of your life before you're, before you turn forty. You describe the, you know, your super successful Hollywood actress, you've got this husband who is, you know, Will Smith, and he's a super successful Hollywood. A actor. You've got these kids, you've got the family, you got the house, you got it all.

**[1:16:03] Steven Bartlett:** Externally, you're killing the game, so internally you must be killing the game.

**[1:16:06] Jada Pinkett Smith:** right, internally, you know, I was spiritually bankrupt, right?

**[1:16:15] Steven Bartlett:** I I find it so, I find it so interesting hearing you describe the relationship that both you and Will had as it relates to conflict resolution. I find it so interesting, cause I've come to learn over the last couple of years that the way we deal with conflict predicts the long term health of our relationships. oh God, yeah, And I think there's this professor called Professor, I think it's called Professor John Gottman, who studied couples and tried to figure out why they end up in divorce.

**[1:16:39] Steven Bartlett:** And he says the number one reason is because they build contempt. attempt And that that's all about conflict resolution, how you're that is, dealing with your bullshit. Now you remind me of my partner because she wants connection, she wants to talk, she wants to resolve things, she's, you know, she wants to deal with the emotions. I would like to not. I will buy you something to make sure that you're safe. I'll pay for your stuff, but I just wanna work and I, and that's the way you describe Will.

**[1:17:09] Steven Bartlett:** Yeah, and so I resonated with Will in in that. But I, I, you sharing how you felt throughout that story helped me to understand my partner and all the conversations she's had with me about what she actually wants from me. And me misunderstanding her because we have different love languages, and your love language starts when you're a kid, right?

**[1:17:30] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, for sure.

**[1:17:32] Steven Bartlett:** And Will's does, too. What was that conflict of your love languages?

**[1:17:39] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Wills, you know, was very much like yours. It's like, Mm-mm. I wanna work, I'm gonna work hard so that you can have everything in the world that you'd ever want. You know, I'm, you're not gonna need for anything, right? And my love language was like, but I just want you to be here with me. I don't need all of that stuff. I wanna look in your eyes and, you know, feel your love and feel your protection here with me.

**[1:18:05] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And you know, it was like that connection. I wanted to feel like I wanted to make a masterpiece out of our connection, you know? And he wanted to make a masterpiece out of, you know, the the the life itself, right? And neither is wrong, neither is wrong. And that's what I had to learn. That that that's where we we've come to now. And understanding neither one of those wants are wrong. How do you balance them? Cause it can't be one or the other.

**[1:18:46] Jada Pinkett Smith:** How do we balance it? Like yin and yang, everything about life is balance. So I just want you to know that

**[1:18:56] Steven Bartlett:** What are you talking to me?

**[1:18:57] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, I just, I just want you to know that. Because in in as couples, we get into these power struggles. No, my way is right. No, my way is right. Well, if you didn't have this, you know, you know, it gets into all of that, right? And it's like, stop, it's not about anybody being right or wrong. How do you get the balance of it? That's it right. And so, yeah, it took Will and I three decades.

**[1:19:27] Steven Bartlett:** Exactly? I remember that guy's name.

**[1:19:32] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, three decades, okay, three decades. That's what we'll get to, that we'll get you. It doesn't Plain have to be that, you know, it's like, do it now.

**[1:19:45] Steven Bartlett:** Cause that's that's what I've said to my girlfriend is, I've told her that I've got this opportunity now because things are going well in my career. So I just wanna focus for now. And then we're gonna have all of our lives together. I actually said that to him one day and she reminded me of it a week later when we were arguing. I was like, we're gonna have all of our lives together. So like, we'll connect later,

**[1:20:04] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, we'll connect later. It's like, what kind of foolishness is that, you know what I mean? And I'm gonna tell you like this. I bet you when you're on your deathbed, you're not gonna think about whatever it is you're trying to accomplish and achieve. What do you think you're gonna think about most when you're on your deathbed? How you were loved and how you loved? No,

**[1:20:32] Steven Bartlett:** 100%. okay, why And even as I said it, I thought about Tupac and how you never know how long you've got left with someone.

**[1:20:39] Jada Pinkett Smith:** don't know? Why would you ever wanna wait and put that off?

**[1:20:43] Steven Bartlett:** It's an excuse, though, isn't it, It is an excuse, to justify

**[1:20:47] Jada Pinkett Smith:** for sure.

**[1:20:47] Steven Bartlett:** my own toxic workaholism?

**[1:20:49] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Well, you know, I wouldn't call it toxic. I'm, I'm. I'm always careful with this word toxic that we're throwing around, right? Cause we're all so wounded and it's not listen. When intimacy makes us have to look at our shit, right? It's easy to go. I piss you off. I got you this diamond ring, I got you this, you know, beautiful bag. I'm gonna take you on this trip. It's like, right, but like real emotional intimacy, we gotta, we gotta deal with our stuff.

**[1:21:29] Jada Pinkett Smith:** A lot of stuff comes up there, but that's where that's where connection and love and true happiness, true fulfillment is. What's going on in our inner landscape?

**[1:21:48] Steven Bartlett:** you talk of this loss of identity when you married. Will, and this is quote I wrote down. It feels like I can't grasp my own journey. At times I feel resentful and angry. I don't know what to do about it. You and Will had these two sort of different visions for happiness in your lives together. His being that he wanted to take over the world as a global, you know, movie star, all the things that he is.

**[1:22:11] Steven Bartlett:** Um, and within that, you start to lose yourself a little bit, it seems. This word resentful, very interesting word. Can you give color to that word? Why you? why you chose to use that word?

**[1:22:24] Jada Pinkett Smith:** cause it's true, you know? It was like I felt as though at that time, all right, if, if I mean, I, I wanna help you do all of those things. I'm here to help you with that, right? Um, and I'm like, and in return, I should get a bit of what I want, which is connection, right? And so you just for me, just giving and giving and giving and giving and giving and forgiving, forgetting, well, not even forgetting, not realizing that I was abandoning myself.

**[1:23:14] Jada Pinkett Smith:** In the hopes that if I just keep pouring into this, if I just keep pouring into him, if I keep pouring into his dream, I'm gonna eventually get what I want, right? And that's a false idea in so many ways, right? But I, and so many of us do that. If Will looked back and was trying to give me whatever the hell it was I was asking for, it it wouldn't. He wouldn't have been able to accomplish it anyway.

**[1:23:44] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Because if I'm not connected to myself, if I don't have a good relationship with me, there's nothing he can do. So I was gonna be asked out anyway, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, that's part of the journey. There's no right or wrong. Everybody's always trying to find the good guy or bad guy in people's stories. There's no good guys or bad guys. We're all wounded, trying to figure this shit out, you know? And so it took me a long time to realize it is not his responsibility to make you happy.

**[1:24:20] Jada Pinkett Smith:** He can't. It's impossible, but it took me forever. Hard-headed, stubborn, you know, because that romantic idea, and that's why I talk about checking the boxes. It's like, I did everything I was supposed to do. You get to have your dream. How come I'm not having mine? And that's because Will was doing what he wanted to do. He's making himself happy He was making himself happy.

**[1:24:54] Steven Bartlett:** and he says that to you, doesn't he? He says you when you separate, he says he wants you to go, and He's like, go, go, go make yourself happy.

**[1:25:03] Jada Pinkett Smith:** go make yourself happy.

**[1:25:05] Steven Bartlett:** And how did you receive that?

**[1:25:08] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Not well, not well, because, you know, there can be truth, but you know what I'm saying, it's like, how we, you know, I think it was very true. But I think at that particular point in time, I was just still really resentful. I'm just like, you know, oh so, I helped you get your happiness. Now you just go, you know, throw me to the curb. And you know, I gotta do it all on my own now, you know, but that's the truth.

**[1:25:40] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I had to do it on my own, you know, just like he did. You gotta do it on your own, you gotta do it on your own, you gotta do it on your own. And a lot of that's what this this is about. And me detoxing from needing fulfillment and validation outside of myself, detoxing from needing it from Will, my marriage, my family, a career. Like I had to get to the bare bones of Jada and walk.

**[1:26:21] Jada Pinkett Smith:** What I call the exile lands, and those exile lands are going into the crevices of, you know, those places within that were holding me back from myself. All the fears, all of the false information and false ideas of what life is and what a marriage is supposed to be. And you know, who I was supposed to be, what a wife is like, all of it. Perfectionism, Perfectionism. And then I just went off to be completely imperfect and took joy in that.

**[1:27:02] Steven Bartlett:** cause being in Hollywood, I mean, this is a place that values the appearance of perfectionism. I think every looks perfect on the surface.

**[1:27:08] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, and I think it's not a healthy idea. It's just not healthy and it's not true, and nobody can live up to that, you know? Which is why I've been dismantling that need to be perfect for myself, and that's been a painful ride. But

**[1:27:35] Steven Bartlett:** Leading up to your 40th birthday, which is also where the book starts. I, I read the first pages of the prologue and I couldn't quite believe what I was reading. Because the place you're at in your life, this chronic state of discontent that you describe. I, I remember when I got to the chapter 17 in the book, which is no sock em. I'm here. That was the first time I had to stop reading because it was a lot, a lot for me to take.

**[1:28:06] Steven Bartlett:** Hearing that. That's what was going on in your head, in your mind, that's the way you viewed life, you didn't see any path forward for you. You're 39 years old. Um, apparently, you know, on the surface, it seems like you've got everything that anyone would dream of having, but internally there's this chronic state of discontent. If I was, I often say to people, if I was a fly on the wall, but if I was a fly inside the walls, what were you?

**[1:28:38] Steven Bartlett:** What was going through your mind? 39 years old, about to turn 40?

**[1:28:42] Jada Pinkett Smith:** oh, I was. I was in a very, very dark place, very dark place.

**[1:28:52] Steven Bartlett:** Just I remember the line I read where you said, If I got to four Pm every day,

**[1:28:57] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I was like, I made it, I made it, and even that was like, so hard. I mean, you know, I was talking to my mother this morning, cause she just read the book. And she said, I can't believe you didn't talk about how you woke up every day crying.

**[1:29:15] Steven Bartlett:** really?

**[1:29:15] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, and I was like, you know, Ma, I, I just. I think it was enough to tell people that I was looking for a cliff to drive off of, you know? And what she brought up was like, she knew I was unhappy, but she didn't know why. So it wasn't that people around me didn't know that I was really unhappy. It's just that everybody believed what I believed, which is why it was so hard for me to talk about.

**[1:29:48] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Which is like, you've got everything, what are you unhappy about, right? And so that's how I was feeling. You've got everything, what are you unhappy about? And that was just. I had so much shame around that, cause I didn't understand, and even then there wasn't a lot of conversation around mental health. And so I was just like, fuck it, I can't keep doing this. I want out. And it was just a really, really dark time.

**[1:30:31] Steven Bartlett:** When you say you were looking for a cliff to drive off of, you're not saying that theoretically or as a metaphor.

**[1:30:36] Jada Pinkett Smith:** No, I'm saying I was looking to the point where I was like, Big Sur, I knew exactly the route to drive, and it's this really narrow route, and sometimes it gets really foggy there at night. And you, I'm not, I'm not making it out of that, out of that drop. I, I remember driving that one time, going to Big Sur, cause I was looking like here, like a mile, and I was like, these drops aren't gonna like.

**[1:31:08] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I need a drop that I'm not making it back. I don't wanna be disfigured, I don't want, I want out. And I knew I had to make it look like an accident, cause I did not want my kids to think that I had committed suicide. No, I was, I was, yeah, I was in a lot of pain. I was in a really, really dark place. And when you're in that place, you just can't see your way out.

**[1:31:41] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And you really think I really thought something was really wrong with me because what I was feeling wasn't matching the exterior of my life. So I really did feel like I, I was just born broken and I was just wired in a way that just

**[1:32:08] Steven Bartlett:** What was the truth? If that's how you felt, what was in hindsight? Now? What do you know to be the truth of that emotion and that state of your life? 39, 40 years old? What was actually going on?

**[1:32:22] Jada Pinkett Smith:** that. I really feel like that. Sometimes when we get into these states of wanting to die, you know, for those of us who have had, like, suicidal thoughts and what have you? Sometimes it is chemical, that's a different thing. I think mine was more psychological. Something is asking to die, but not you. And it's a it's, it's a different way of looking at things, right? And so, and that it's it is it. It is an extreme shift in which I had to get out of my cycle of self-hatred.

**[1:33:12] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I was in a cycle of self-hatred that I didn't even know, cause we're unconscious of it. So the mind is tricking us, you know what I mean? We gotta be careful with this. This isn't as reliable as we think, you know, and so, um, but I was in a I was in a cycle of self-hatred, and it wasn't until, thank God, for my son that I was, you know, he introduced me. Um, his friend's father did ayahuasca, and they happened to be talking about it, and they talked to me about it.

**[1:33:54] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Jaden came in the kitchen. He's like, you gotta sit down with Moises and Mateo, you gotta hear about this experience, ma that their dad had.

**[1:34:01] Steven Bartlett:** Was Jaden saying that intentionally? Did he know that you needed?

**[1:34:03] Jada Pinkett Smith:** No, he wasn't saying that. He was just curious, He was just, he knows I'm curious, he knows I'm a seeker, right? That was divine. And so I went and talked to them and I was like, Hey, is your dad in town? And then their dad came and I talked to him and he, I was like, I need that. And then the universe opened up a door for me to have my own ceremony for days of like, intense, tense ceremony.

**[1:34:38] Jada Pinkett Smith:** But that's when I got to see that cycle of self-hatred. I was like, This is you, these are your thoughts. This is how you feel about yourself. This is the problem. And so the medicine really showed me this pit of self-hatred I was in, and it helped me get out of it.

**[1:35:06] Steven Bartlett:** chapter twenty of the book you titled Surrender, Surrender is an interesting word. Why is surrender so important in your journey?

**[1:35:15] Jada Pinkett Smith:** you have to surrender everything you think you are and everything you think you know.

**[1:35:19] Steven Bartlett:** I've spoken to a lot of people that have done Alcoholics Anonymous, and they talk about the importance Surrender, of surrender.

**[1:35:24] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, it's like surrendering, you know, for me, also surrendering to a power, a higher power, and that's a constant. That's every day I have to remind myself and deepen my surrender to a power far greater than myself.

**[1:35:45] Steven Bartlett:** Chapter twenty one, The Holy Joke, The Holy Slap, and the Holy Lessons. It's interesting because there's similarities between chapter nineteen and chapter twenty one in that you took a lot of the blame for situations. Chapter nineteen, The Entanglement Conversation. Because when you watch that clip online at the at the red table, Will looks tired and he looks sad, and he says that thing, he says, I'm gonna get you back. It did. It made it look like you had cheated on him or something.

**[1:36:17] Steven Bartlett:** I had to like, check the facts, because if you see that clip in isolation, it looks like you cheated on Will or something, which is not what happened. But you put that out anyway, you I did, put, you could have not put that out. I know, Do you regret putting that out? You don't,

**[1:36:30] Jada Pinkett Smith:** I don't. If I didn't put that out, I wouldn't have seen that next place of healing that I needed. Because I can take so much like discomfort. It wasn't until I saw how the people around me were affected. I mean, my mother, my kids, my friends, people like they were like, how could you do this? And I was like, Well, I just wanted to end everything, you know? Will wasn't ready for the world to know that we weren't together and that we were living separate lives.

**[1:37:21] Jada Pinkett Smith:** And I just took it because I just wanted to stop. I just wanted it to end. People were like, No, my mother was like, What are you? She was like, you need to get your ass in therapy. She was like, You are codependent as hell, you know? And everybody was just so. And then how people that love me so much were affected by that time. I don't think it would have penetrated. And for me to really look at that part of myself if it hadn't been for how the people around me reacted.

**[1:38:06] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Cause I don't really care about public in that way, like most people do. I don't, whatever, cause I understand the chaos and the just absurdity of all of that. But people who love me, I needed that mirror to see that place of healing that needed to happen in me and the dynamic within myself.

**[1:38:30] Steven Bartlett:** what was that dynamic within yourself? Just like martyrdom, Oh, okay, throwing yourself under the

**[1:38:35] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, that martyrdom, that I'm, I will, martyrdom, the holy slap yeah,

**[1:38:41] Steven Bartlett:** you, you. You write about in the book how you didn't realize that Will had actually slapped Chris until much later. You thought it, you suspected, maybe it was a skit I thought or a joke.

**[1:38:49] Jada Pinkett Smith:** it was a skit, and then I realized it wasn't. But I didn't think that he actually made contact with Chris. Looked like he ducked it,

**[1:38:55] Steven Bartlett:** Social media grabbed onto this eye roll, and they, um, social media believed that that eye roll was some kind of like, like, go get him, Will.

**[1:39:06] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah. And even if it was, it was like, I can't force Will to do anything, you know,

**[1:39:10] Steven Bartlett:** And you and Will weren't together.

**[1:39:12] Jada Pinkett Smith:** we weren't together, as you know, we were family. I was there with him as family, but we weren't together at that time.

**[1:39:21] Steven Bartlett:** Were you surprised by the reaction? And to that moment, both for you, but also for Will? And I was

**[1:39:29] Jada Pinkett Smith:** and no. I was surprised at how much. I knew I was gonna get blamed, but like, I didn't think that it was gonna be. I. I mean, it was insane, you know, it was like, wow, um, but I knew, I knew we were, ha, I knew it was gonna be a storm.

**[1:39:48] Steven Bartlett:** in the book, you say, protection is your love language. He protected you, didn't he? Did you see that as a act of love?

**[1:39:59] Jada Pinkett Smith:** you know, it's a really complicated moment. It's a really complex moment. I'll say yes and no in a certain manner, you know, um, but I definitely think in his way. But it was, it was so much more. It wasn't about me. That's why it's complex, right? It's like it was about a lot more than just that moment, a lot more than just me. That's what I know, you know what I mean,

**[1:40:34] Steven Bartlett:** Cause you know Will, and you know where he's come from.

**[1:40:36] Jada Pinkett Smith:** yeah, and I, I. There was a lot that was stirring up for him at that time because of emancipation, and he and Chris have their own history.

**[1:40:46] Steven Bartlett:** Going back to the eighties,

**[1:40:47] Jada Pinkett Smith:** Yeah, going back to the eighties, and it's a deep one.

**[1:40:52] Steven Bartlett:** Jada, thank you, thank you for writing this book, because it's. It's not until we understand people's context that we understand them, and when we understand them, we realize that they are just so much like us. In the the wounded, the imperfect, the survival, the defense and all of those things. And that's exactly what I got from reading Worthy. Um, but also, as I said to you, I think before we started recording, there were so many moments in there that acted as the advice that no one around me could have given me because they've not walked in those stairs.

**[1:41:24] Steven Bartlett:** You, you act as an elder to me in the book because you're. You've helped me to figure out and shine a light on a certain area of my behavior, which comes from, um, maybe a wound that I have that is gonna hold me back and lead me to a place I don't wanna go to. promise you, yes, Yeah, exactly, and you're right, you've used the word breadcrumbs, but that's exactly what the book is. It's these, these, it's your story, but throughout your story, you leave these little nuggets of wisdom and lessons that will guide those that read the book to a better place in their own lives.

**[1:41:55] Steven Bartlett:** And they can subjectively define what that better place is. But the wisdom is enduring, because the wisdom is human, and it's true, so there's something in there for everybody. It's one of the the best books I've ever read because of the the writing style, the vividness. I I felt like I was in your grandmother's garden. I felt like I was there at, um, all of the key moments. Uh, when you, when you have what I described, what I thought was a panic attack on the highway, and those moments, the moments of sadness, the vividness of the writing is so is so profound.

**[1:42:22] Steven Bartlett:** But the vulnerability of the book is the most impressive thing. It's easy not to be vulnerable, it's easy to paint a narrative that is self-serving, but that's not what you do here. You seem to be in the pursuit of the truth, and that's exactly what I take away from this book. So thank you so much, Jada.

**[1:42:36] Jada Pinkett Smith:** thank you. thank you for creating a safe space at your gray table and, uh, for holding my tears today. I appreciate that, thank you.

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