Jada Pinkett Smith briefly spoke about the Oscars incident when her husband Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, People reports. During this week’s Red Table Talk, she opened the floor for those with alopecia to share their stories and mentioned the incident.
While introducing the episode, Jada looked into the camera to discuss the importance of the episode‘s subject matter.
“This is a really important Red Table Talk on alopecia,” she explained in the video. “Considering what I’ve been through with my own health and what happened at the Oscars, thousands have reached out to me with their stories. I’m using this moment to give our alopecia family the opportunity to talk about what it’s like to have this condition, and to inform people about alopecia.”
She continued, addressing the night of the Oscars.
“Now about Oscar night,” she said. “My deepest hope is that these two intelligent, capable men have an opportunity to heal, talk this out and reconcile. With the state of the world today, we need ’em both, and we all actually need one another more than ever.”
“Until then, Will and I are continuing to do what we have done for the last 28 years — and that’s [to] keep figuring out this thing called life together. Thank you for listening,” Smith concluded.
Alongside her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, and daughter, Willow Smith, Jada talked about her struggles with alopecia and anxiety, Entertainment Weekly reports. She said she’s often felt “shame” about her on-again, off-again hair loss over the last four years.
“One of the reasons I thought this show was really important is because I had so much outreach from people who suffer from alopecia, have children who suffer from alopecia, and they don’t talk about it because there’s so much shame around it,” she said. “There’s so many people walking around who have alopecia and that we don’t even know. I felt like it was so important to allow the alopecia community, our brothers and sisters, to tell their story. I think that people don’t understand what alopecia is and they don’t understand the effects of it.”
The hosts welcomed Niki Ball to the show to discuss the mom’s seventh-grade daughter who had alopecia. Ball’s daughter, Rio Allred, died by suicide just two weeks before the Oscars telecast. Rio took her own life after enduring relentless bullying at school for her shaved head.
“I was just like, ‘What is the universe doing right now? This is crazy. People are going to be googling, ‘What is alopecia?'” Ball said. “It’s not a joke. The alopecia community was already in an uproar. We’d heard from so many people. I didn’t realize how huge and amazing that community is.”
