The first Hollywood family that reveals everything: the evolution of the Smith

Will may be the most publicly profiled member of the Smith family, but Jada is the one who helped outline the reinvention of the family with Red Table Talk. The show, which can be viewed on Facebook Watch, kicked off in mid-2018, and quickly became known for its unexpectedly vulnerable conversations with both celebrity guests and hostesses: Jada, Willow, and Jada’s mom, Adrienne. Each woman stands firm in her position – this is seen, for example, in the episode about the polyamoryin which Willow seems to baffle the co-hosts with her comments—but family goodwill prevents real tensions from erupting on the show.

In the last two decades, reality shows have become an alternative safe space for the most famous. Backstage confessions used to be more the purview of the tabloid press, an unpleasant side effect of fame to be avoided at all costs. But from the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century, in the era of The Osbournes on MTV, reality shows began to offer an escape hatch where celebrities could cash in on their fame before being pushed down the off-ramp of career irrelevance.

It was something new, and it ended up fostering an entire industry of second chances to attract attention, usually for C and D level celebrities, both in family soap operas with documentary overtones and in programs like Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew and Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars. Social networks expanded the possibilities available, giving new oxygen to the well-known who were on the way to becoming less known.

For the Smith family, Red Table Talk It was a proof of concept: It was acceptable, even desirable, for high-profile celebrities to make confessions part of their brand.

More than one episode delves into the challenges of Will and Jada’s marriage, offering small glimpses of revelation about a couple that is often on everyone’s lips. They insist that they will never be separated, since after overcoming certain unspecified challenges, “there is nothing that can break our relationship” (at the end of the talk, Will tries to deny some frequent rumors: “We have never been Scientologists, we have never exchanged partners”, although Jada goes on to point out that the latter refers to a “specific lifestyle”).

If you watch enough episodes of Red Table Talk After reading Will’s book and absorbing his entire YouTube series, you might discover the same story told in several different ways: the actor has been planning this vent for some time. Unlike Jada, who approaches the show and shares truths about it more lightly, Will has taken this change with all seriousness and is treating it like the production stages of a blockbuster movie: rehearsal, refinement, and flawless execution.