Adrienne Banfield-Norris, Willow Smith, and Jada Pinkett Smith
The generations-spanning ‘Red Table Talk’ hosts have the realest roundtable on TV
when willow smith was 11, she made a request of her mom, Jada Pinkett Smith: “I know you as my mother, but I want to know who you were before you were my mother.” Pinkett Smith called up her own mom, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, and they all settled in for a deep, mutigenerational talk. “We saw how much it helps us,” says Smith, now 20. “It was like, ‘Whoa, this is really uncovering some things. I wonder if we can give this feeling to others.’ ” Seven years later, in 2018, Red Table Talk was born. The Facebook Watch talk show, hosted by all three women, is a place where they dig into everything from porn addiction to white privilege. It’s also become a tell-all destination for other celebrities, like influencer Olivia Jade, who discussed the college admissions scandal that put her parents behind bars. Pinkett Smith even brought herself to the table, opening up with husband Will Smith about her extramarital relationship while the spouses were separated. The goal now: “Broadening the empire,” Smith says. Gloria Estefan leads the first spinoff with her daughter and niece. One will launch in India next, then in the Middle East. The hosts hope it continues to open minds. “The variety of perspectives is interesting,” Pinkett Smith says. “People like to put black women in one big old pot. That myth has to be dissolved.”