Jada Pinkett Smith has added to the growing conversation surrounding industry stylists’ lack of knowledge about styling Black hair.
In the latest episode of Red Table Talk, Pinkett Smith talked about the caliber of wigs available on set during the filming of The Nutty Professor, accusing the stylist of ignorance about Black hair.
“They put me in some crazy wigs for sure, where people didn’t really know enough about Black hair to know how to make wigs and what the wigs should look like,” she said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
She called her experience with the wigs a “rough one,” adding that “the woman who made this wig, she missed the mark.” She said the stylist straightened the hair on the wigs, but not the wigs’ roots. Pinkett Smith spoke up about the poor styling, but the hairstylist’s decisions prevailed.
“She thought that the roots should not be smooth, but the hair should be straight,” said Pinkett Smith. “She was like, ‘Well, usually for Black women, you don’t have straightened roots.’ And I said, ‘Oh no, we do. We either straighten it with a hot comb or we perm it.’ But she didn’t believe me. So she made it with roots that weren’t straight, but the hair was…That was the last time I didn’t have my own hairstylist.”
Smith has previously talked about her experiences on The Nutty Professor on an episode of Red Table Talk. In the episode, she admitted to her struggles with drug addiction, saying that she had passed out while on the set of the film from “a bad batch of Ecstasy.”
“I passed out,” she said. “I went to work high, and it was a bad batch of ecstasy. And I passed out. And I told everybody that I had taken–I must’ve had old medication in a vitamin bottle. That’s what I said. But I tell you what I did though. Got my ass together and got on that set. That was the last time.”