Jada Pinkett Smith opens up about depression, writing “Worthy” and her version of a happy ending

Jada Pinkett Smith has it all: a beautiful family, famous husband, Emmy Award-winning talk show. She is a rockstar, author of a bestselling children’s book and star of multiple movies and TV shows. At 52, Pinkett Smith has lived the dreams of so many people and is still growing. And yet, even with her success, she recently contemplated suicide. Pinkett Smith opened up about her bouts with depression and the road to understanding the things that really mattered on a recent episode of “Salon Talks.”

Jada Pinkett Smith is most known for hosting “Red Table Talk” and appearing in hit films such as “Scream 2,” “Ali” and multiple installments of “The Matrix” and “Madagascar franchises. She is also a producer, with “The Secret Life of Bees,” the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical “Fela!,” the 2014 film remake of “Annie” and the 2010 remake of “The Karate Kid” among her credits. While Hollywood and her fans were celebrating Pinkett Smith’s accomplishments over the last 30 years, she was fighting what seemed to be insurmountable pain — in her words, “looking for cliffs to drive myself over to make it look like an accident.” Pinkett Smith details this and much more in her new memoir “Worthy.”

“Worthy” is a deep dive into the life of Jada, beginning with her days in Baltimore, where she was a young drug runner, the moment when she realized that she could be transformed by art, and her journey to Hollywood. “Worthy” answers questions about her family, her relationship with slain rapper Tupac Shakur, her separation from husband Will Smith, and how she has managed to survive and find normalcy while living an extremely public life. And most importantly, “Worthy” defines and documents the many ways in which Pinkett Smith has and continues to heal. 

You can watch my “Salon Talks” episode with Jada Pinkett Smith here or read a Q&A of our conversation below to learn more about the role she wants to play in dealing with suicide prevention, the many struggles that came with releasing this memoir, and while she wasn’t rattled during the biggest slap in Hollywood history.  

The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You really were always — and I’ve told you this before — but as an artist, as a person who made it out of the city, you set the standard, artists and non-artists alike.

Yeah, thank you. We were just in the city. I just did a primetime special with Hoda at Baltimore School for the Arts, and then I went to my old neighborhood on Price Avenue. I went to some of my old stomping grounds over there, Dolfield and Cold Spring Lane. Baltimore is still Baltimore, to say the least. I almost got caught up over there bad, but it was like, “Here’s Baltimore. This is what it is.” But it’s still my hometown. I just love it.

You wrote this beautiful memoir, and you covered so much. I wasn’t expecting the book to open up with suicidal thoughts, which is a conversation that we’re not having enough. Could you talk about that? 

I talk about that a couple of times throughout the book. The first time, I was 21 years old. I call it a nervous breakdown when I had extreme suicidal thoughts, and those thoughts pretty much followed me up until 40. At 40 years old, it just got really bad, to the point that I was looking for cliffs to drive myself over to make it look like an accident because I didn’t want my kids to ever think that I had committed suicide. 

It was really about, I think, that idea that if you have a certain amount of success, and you’ve achieved, then you are exempt from all the ills of the human condition and that all your problems will be solved. I understand why people believe that because I believed that for a long, long time. But at 40 years old, I just hit a wall and that was it.

Suicides have risen in communities of color across the board. So, again, I think it’s very important that you’re having this conversation. As a society, what do you think we, as a collective, can do better?

I think that one of the difficulties that I find in our community, and I suffer from still, I’m in trauma therapy and a lot of us grow up in war zones, and there’s so much stuff going on, we actually don’t feel as though we have the right to feel pain or upset, or that we can’t afford to because we’ve got to keep it moving. 

All of this trauma, all this pain, all of these emotions just get compacted, whether it’s anger, whether it’s rage, whether it’s despair. And I think that that is prevalent in our community. And we just don’t have a lot of resources either. We just don’t have a lot of resources. I think where we need to do better is that we need more resources and we need more professionals that understand our specific experience in order to help us navigate our emotional landscapes.

As I’ve grown in my own career, one of the things that makes a lot of people, especially in talking to different networks or talking to people who have power to make certain decisions, when they find out I’m from Baltimore, or when they read one of my books about growing up in Baltimore, it’s always like, “Oh, he’s from Baltimore.” Was it like that for you when you first got into the industry?

Not really. I think it might’ve been, maybe, after “The Wire.” I mean, when you say it now, it’s like, “Oh.” It’s like what you said, “You’re from Baltimore.” But, yeah, I came to LA in the early ’90s. Like, ’90, ’91. It was just like, “Oh, Baltimore!” 

Lena from Baltimore had an edge.

Oh, yeah. Lena from Baltimore definitely had an edge. But when I [went] into the rooms, not everybody knew. When I went in there and I was with Debbie, Debbie knew when I came in. She was like, “Tell me about you.” And so, telling her that I’m from Baltimore, telling her what my upbringing had been, and I think that edge a lot of times gave me the edge in some of those rooms. And then, sometimes, it was too much edge. But I always have felt like my upbringing in Baltimore, I talk about it in a couple of chapters in my book, the university are the B-more streets, because, honestly, I don’t think that, without that university, I would’ve been able to come to LA and survive on my own the way that I did.

The way you write about Tupac, and you just released that video the other day of you guys — we take that three-hour ride to Kings Dominion. That’s our Disney World.

Yes!

But the fun, that moment, the innocence, the beauty, it is such a perfect video that captured an era from the way you were dressed to just that fun. Have you ever felt like you miss that time period, those moments in life, that innocence, being in the School for the Arts, dreaming?

Absolutely, I do. That was a really magical time. Even with all the difficulty and challenges, it was a really magical time. It’s so funny because I hadn’t seen that video in a while. Before I put out that clip, I put out another clip speaking on an excerpt that I have from one of the chapters that talks about my relationship with Tupac, and when I was watching that video, we were both so innocent, had no idea what life was about to bring our way. It’s just so funny how life plays out like that and the fact that we are lip-syncing to Will’s song. It’s just totally crazy. It’s crazy. One of the things that I feel really blessed to have the opportunity to do is really take people on the journey of my relationship with Pac so they can understand our friendship.

I mean, we go through this, but I feel like society doesn’t do a good enough job at acknowledging and recognizing real beautiful friendships between men and women. It’s like everything’s not some type of motive, and people don’t always have their eyes set — it’s that brother and sister type of love.

Yeah, definitely.

I think you do a great job explaining that.

Thank you. Thank you. Look, and I totally get it. You know what I mean? I get it. Without the context of what our story has been together. I mean, I totally understand why people are, “Yeah, they were so tight. Why were they so tight?” We just took really good care of each other. And that dude was like my father at times, my brother at times, you know what I’m saying? And we just really took good care of each other.

They also don’t really fully understand the position that you guys were in. I’m from East Baltimore, so I know I didn’t even have the courage to be an artist when I was a teenager, and I wanted to be an artist my whole life. I didn’t even have the courage to go away from the status quo and pursue art. So, even being in a space like School for the Arts is a culture shock. Coming from where you come from, it could be culture shock, so you lean on your people.

Absolutely, and because of your challenges, I mean, part of what made my relationship with Pac so solid is because we were both challenged with having mothers that were addicts. We really tried to supplement for the lack of parental attention. There was just a lot of ways we helped each other survive. That’s just the bottom line. 

With that, there’s this level of loyalty through and through. Specifically, when you get out here in these Hollywood streets, and everybody now wants to love you because you got a hit record or you’re on a hit TV show, you are going to lean even more on the people who were down for you who knew you when, before all that.

In the book, you write, “We all have traumas in our childhood that can make us overlook the beauty that surrounds us. Often, we believe we have to focus more on negative events because they caused us so much pain.” Do you feel like too many young people are missing out on joy, the joy you displayed in that video, because of trauma? Or are we allowed to experience that joy because so many things are just so heavy? 

No. It’s really hard if you don’t know how to look around you to find the laughter because for some of us, it is not as apparent. It makes it really difficult, but that’s why I feel like young people today, we just need better resources. Really, it is on us. We have to figure out how to help people, and young people specifically, with the challenges that the world presents to young people on a daily basis. 

Because here’s the one thing: I just had to worry about what was in front of me. Kids today, they’ve got to worry about what’s in front of them while also having all the pressures of what’s going on in Ukraine, what’s happening in Africa, like “Oh no, in Morocco, there’s this whole thing going on.” There’s the storms happening over there in Ohio. You are connected to so much information. And even if you think, “Well, that don’t have nothing to do with me,” that stress is still compounding upon the consciousness of all of us — not even just young people. Adults, too. So, really, just finding resources that help us navigate all the difficulties that we’re challenged with. We’re bombarded with so much information today.

Have you always been so insightful?

No. That’s called having to do a lot of work because I’ve been through so much.

I feel like watching “Red Table Talk” and seeing how you process heavy conversations and heavy information, and a long time ago I had a meeting at your house with your brother Caleb to talk about doing the film, “Charm City Kings.” We were having one of those heavy conversations where we’re talking about the lives of the people that were to be portrayed in the film. Everything you said, it just felt like wisdom. Where did that come from? 

Well, it’s been over the years of just me having to learn how to deal with my challenges. So, whether it’s through trauma therapy, whether it’s through experiences with plant medicine, whether it’s through learning about different spiritual concepts and ideas and different religious scripture, talking to people, along the way I have been so determined to heal and so determined to have a better understanding of what this life is all about so that it doesn’t hurt so much. I just was tired of hurting. My whole life has been about seeking answers so that I can just have a more easeful time here. So, whatever false beliefs I might have, whatever misunderstandings I might have about life, I wanted to unlearn what was keeping me in pain.

Are your children drawn to Baltimore?

No.

Can they imagine your reality?

It is hard for them to imagine, but they love hearing about what my life was like. It’s hard for them to imagine that their mother used to run the streets the way she did. It is hard. I mean, even going back to Baltimore and going back to some of my old stomping grounds, I was just like, “Wow. Wow.” That’s when I know God is so real. God is so real.

What was the conversation with your family like before you decided to pass in the final version of that manuscript? 

I had different conversations with different family members. It was just talking to the kids about what I was expressing in the book about my journey with them and making sure that they knew. They weren’t really aware of how deep my depression was. They knew that I wasn’t happy, but they didn’t know that their mother was contemplating suicide. So, just know that was part of my journey and that’s going to be in the book. 

I had conversations like that, but the entire family has been so supportive and has really been cheering me on. Will specifically has been really helpful in guiding me in regards to understanding how difficult it can be to write your story. He was really helpful in giving me tips on how to get through some challenging moments while I was writing.

Yeah, he’s good at talking about how we need to go through certain things to appreciate the things that we have.

That’s right.

Was there anything you were hesitant to put in the book that made the final copy?

Nothing event-wise. It’s very difficult when you’re telling your journey not to feel like you have the right to tell someone else’s journey — meaning not tell someone else’s journey, like actual events, but even how they might feel about an event that you are experiencing together. I wanted to be really careful of making sure that the lens always stayed on me in regards to what I was going through, what I was thinking, and leave it to everyone else to tell their story, whether it’s my kids or whether it’s Will or my mother. I can say how I felt and what was going on with me, but I wanted to be very careful not to get too involved about what I thought they were thinking at that time because you really can’t know.

Sometimes writing a memoir and telling your story, hurting people is par for the course. It happens, and you don’t want to try to assume or imagine that perspective.

Exactly, and that’s the thing to be careful of, right? I was there, this is what I think was going on, but that’s not for me. You know what I mean? It’s just making sure, because the whole book is about my journey from unworthy to worthy.

That was really an interesting lesson because, even in life, just staying open to the idea, “OK, I might know what’s going on with me, but I need to listen and look at the person in front of me so that they can tell me, get me out of my assumptions.” Because my assumptions, they might be close around the area of what’s happening with someone else, but it’s never bullseye.

Was it easy for you to write about the Oscars?

Yeah and no. I’ll tell you what wasn’t easy about writing about the Oscars. It is such a layered, complex event that will continue to unfold for many years to come. I could have talked about it from 50 million different perspectives. It was really just honing in on, just streamlining, all my thoughts. I had so many thoughts, so I had to streamline it, and I think that was the part that was challenging.

My wife is from West Baltimore, and when it happened, we were watching it. She said, “You know Jada’s from West Baltimore. She’s so cool. She doesn’t rattle easy at all.”

Right.

“It is who we are.”

Right, right.

But being able to grow and being able to understand situations and talk about them is the only way we’ll get through any of this stuff.

Absolutely. It’s real talk. I think that this life is a university. This life is about curriculums, and we are all here to learn. That was a big learning moment for a lot of us.

You start the book in a dark place, but we end on a positive note. What is the happy ending for Jada Pinkett Smith?

A happy ending for Jada Pinkett Smith is knowing her self-worth. When we know, and me knowing my self-worth, that is the foundation of happiness. We think that it’s all about external circumstances, being a specific way, or I want that specific house, or I want that specific thing, and all of that is beautiful. All of that can assist the foundation, but it can’t be the foundation. Really sitting in this chair today and having 10 toes down on understanding and believing in my self-worth.

If you are in crisis, please call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.