We knew there would be revelations when Jada Pinkett Smith announced her memoir, but it got real messy… real fast.
Jada shared that she and her husband Will Smith have been secretly separated since 2016. The revelation sent social media into a tizzy.
On TikTok, users are fed up, posting funny and sometimes mean posts, telling Jada to keep Will’s name out of her mouth and on X (formerly Twitter), Black folk are begging to be let out of the Smiths “group chat.”
Ryan Davis, a popular social media comedian, has over 300,000 likes on his Tiktok video that is titled simply, “Leave us alone.” In the video, Davis unloads on Jada saying the actress “embarrasses” her husband and says that fans didn’t need to know that the couple were separated.
Conservative personality Candace Owens took to her channel to call Jada “the most unlikeable woman in Hollywood.” Really Candace? And she also said Will wasn’t a man. Next.
Another user said that she is “so tired” of Jada. In a lengthy post, she rants about the 52-year-old celebrity and discounts Jada’s own prolific career saying she lives in “his house,” and then adds that she doesn’t know what Will has done in the couple’s nearly 30-year marriage.
In all honesty, some of this is funny but it’s all unfair and misogynistic. For instance, the social media posts are overwhelmingly supportive of Will, one user says he is “suffering in silence.”
But let’s lay down some facts. In his memoir, Will Smith described himself as a “narcissist” who is also “insecure” and “difficult to live with.” Even his two younger children sought emancipation from him in their youth.
In his 400-page memoir, “Will,” the Academy Award-winning actor also said that he and his wife were separated, but that blurb never made it to national news and he never got hate for revealing it.
Just like her husband did in his book, Jada should be allowed to speak her truth about her life—and that is what she’s doing.
She has opened herself up to public ridicule, but when she announced the release of “Worthy,” she said that she was taking back her narrative, and that includes opening up about her marriage.
“My memoir starts at the beginning,” she wrote on Instagram saying that she was “offering an unvarnished and revealing account from my challenging upbringing in Baltimore into a controversial life in Hollywood. It’s a harrowing ride of reclaiming my self-worth while unraveling unspoken truths.”
She added, “My adventures of my youth, meaningful friendships, marriage, motherhood, self-betrayal and self reclamation are mere reflections of the adventures so many of us have taken in search of happiness. My hope is that through the exploration of my own tumultuous situations to the rediscovery of deep love, that we are all reminded that no matter where we may be on our journey, we are all…Worthy.”
We hope the public will show Jada some love on her book tour. Tickets are available at ourworthyjourney.com—and they are selling fast. The book hits stores on Tuesday, October 17 and is available for pre-order now on Amazon.