Just in time for Mother’s Day, one of Hollywood’s most famous moms is inviting us to her table—the red table, that is—for Red Table Talk, a new Facebook series created and hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith, featuring her 17-year-old daughter, Willow, and mom, Adrienne Banfield-Norris.
“Motherhood and everything that comes with it is our red-hot topic,” Pinkett promises. The first episode certainly fulfills that promise as Sheree Fletcher, the first wife of Pinkett Smith’s husband, Will, and mother of his older son, Trey, joins Pinkett Smith at the red table to talk past conflicts and the challenges of building a blended family. It’s a raw, sometimes painful, but ultimately healing conversation—and, I feel, as the eldest child of a blended family myself, a necessary one to have publicly.
“I thought it was important to have that conversation because she was my entry point to motherhood,” Pinkett Smith told Access Hollywood. “I was co-mothering with her. At that particular time, before [having a blended family] was popular, before it was even an idea, we were trying to create something that we had never experienced.”
In its 10-episode inaugural season, Red Table Talk will also talk teenage motherhood, sex and reconciliation—namely, the healing of a long-standing rift between Pinkett Smith and Gabrielle Union. No word yet on frequency or how the series might evolve, but if the concept sounds familiar, it’s because it was birthed from the original Red Table Talk, a family chat that went viral when it aired on YouTube in 2012.
Now reimagined for Facebook, the first episode has already garnered over 11 million views. So I think it’s safe to say we likely have many red-table talks in our future.