Willow Smith Recalls Witnessing Mom Jada Pinkett Smith Endure "Intense Racism and Sexism"

Before she was the "Whip My Hair" star, Willow Smith saw the treatment her mom faced as a Black woman in music. Read on for the lesson she took from Jada Pinkett Smith that still sticks today.

Watch: Will Smith & Jada Pinkett Smith’s Anniversary: E! News Rewind

For Willow Smith, some of her mom’s most difficult experiences doubled as pivotal lessons. 

In a newly published interview for L’Officiel, the 20-year-old cover star recalled following mom Jada Pinkett Smith, then the lead singer of her nu metal band Wicked Wisdom, on tour and bearing witness to the alarming treatment she faced as a Black woman. 

“My mom got so much hate,” Willow told the magazine. “It was intense racism and sexism, just packed on to the tens. People giving her death threats, throwing glass at her onstage. Some crazy stuff went down when she was touring with her band.”  

“I got to see that hate firsthand,” she added. “It was so scary to me, and I think I internalized a little bit.”

While it’s behavior no one should have had to suffer, how Jada handled such treatment continues to stick with her musical daughter, especially when she is feeling insecure.

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Will Smith & Jada Pinkett Smith Through the Years

“Every time I feel that coming on, I just go back to my memories of my mom and how she would deal with actual physical danger—she just rose above it,” Willow said. “Obviously, she was scared. But she really showed me what ‘womaning up’ really was, by taking a stance and not being afraid of other people’s judgments and perceptions.”

John Sciulli/WireImage

She’s parted with some of her own judgment, too. While she said she previously “really regretted” the “Whip My Hair” phase of her life that unfolded a decade ago, a recent re-listen made Willow change her tune. 

“I’m not saying anything that’s against my values, and on top of that, I’m saying things that are in harmony with my values,” she said. “I kind of just had a huge aha and was like, ‘Yo, don’t condemn this side of your life because it gave you a foundation and a platform and a fan base of so many loving individuals who have been by my side through this whole crazy, topsy-turvy journey that I’ve had. Now, I would never take it back.'”

NeYo and Wife Crystal Smith Welcome Third Child: Find Out the Name of Their New Daughter

After celebrating 6 years of marriage, Ne-Yo and Crystal Smith welcome their third child together. See the beautiful pic of the family.

She got her own thing, that’s why he loves her. Because Ne-Yo and wife Crystal Smith‘s Miss Independent made her early debut June 25. 

Sharing an image of the smiling singer and their newborn daughter, the entrepreneur announced Isabella Rose Smith‘s early arrival on Instagram. “God said don’t make plans honey!” she wrote. “She came 4 weeks early but right on time for mommy!”

The 5-pound, 7-ounce addition joins the couple’s children Shaffer Chimere Smith Jr., 5, and Roman Alexander-Raj Smith, 3, and Ne-Yo’s kids with his ex, Monyetta Shaw: Madilyn Grace Smith, 10, and Mason Evan Smith, 9. As Crystal put it, “My world is finally complete.”

The couple announced their pregnancy back in February, while celebrating their sixth anniversary. 

“It has been a bumpy beautiful, tragically terrific ride full of twists n’ turns, up’s n’ down’s…and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” the “So Sick” singer wrote, referencing their brief 2020 split and reconciliation that ended with the musician re-proposing by the end of the year. “We’ve grown so much. With the understanding that we’ve still got some growing to do of course, I have to acknowledge how far we’ve come.”

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Memorable Celebrity Pregnancy Announcements

For now they’re making beautiful music together. 

“I think once we both realized that marriage isn’t ownership…but partnership, we found our tempo, our melody,” he continued. “And now we’ve become a beautiful harmony. I pray we sing this song forever.”

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“You fell in love with a songwriter, so the words come easy and can be mistaken for pacification,” he concluded. “But I love you like lungs love oxygen. So I’m gonna SHOW YOU as often as humanly possible.”

How Kevin Smith and Harley Quinn Smith Became the Coolest FatherDaughter Duo in Hollywood

In an exclusive interview with E! News, director Kevin Smith and actress and podcaster Harley Quinn Smith opened up about their unique bond and working together.

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Most 21-year-olds would rather be out with their friends, hitting up a club or doing almost anything other than co-host a podcast with their father. Then again, most young adults don’t call Kevin Smith dad.

The director, known for cult films such as Clerks, Mallrats and Jay & Silent Bob, is undeniably cool. But his daughter Harley Quinn Smith might be even cooler…just ask her dad, who couldn’t help but gush over the recent success of her Freeform series Cruel Summer.

“She’s amazing,” Kevin told E! News in a recent Zoom interview alongside Harley. “When the show became real buzzy and everybody’s talking about it, my Twitter feed stopped being about me and started being about her.”

But, being a parent, the filmmaker was admittedly excited about the show’s success for another, slightly more selfish, reason.

“Cruel Summer was a great gift in this house because suddenly she had financial autonomy and stuff and now we’re in a world where I’m like, ‘Can I have some money?” he joked. “Because she makes more than I do!”

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First-Time Dads: Father’s Day 2021

“I’m very happy for her,” the proud dad continued. “I mean to see somebody get financial independence is great, but also to see her get creatively inspired when the show ended, she was just crying. So when you see your kids swept up in the arts like that means everything, especially being an artsy fartsy kid myself.”

Paul Butterfield/Getty Images/Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic/E! Illustration

Like father, like daughter it seems as Harley has followed in Kevin’s footsteps, carving out a unique career as an actress, musician and podcast host. She also, incidentally, got her start appearing in her dad’s movies—including Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Clerks II and Yoga Hosers—before becoming his collaborator.

The duo are currently co-writing a series and though they remained tight-lipped when it came to to the details of the project, they were more than happy to discuss working together.

 

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“It’s such a cool gift to be able to work with somebody you’re related to,” Harley said. “We have pretty similar minds, so it’s kind of like you’re shooting with another version of yourself. It’s so much fun and we’re working on another thing together now which has been, in my opinion, the most fun yet, and I can’t wait for us to be able to share with the world what that is.”

Kevin reflected on the rare journey of going from asking his daughter to audition for his movies to writing and pitching a project with her. 

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“We’ve been writing together which is so much fun because that’s make pretend, right? Like I used to make pretend with her when she was a kid,” he explained. “Now she’s an adult and you rarely get to do that. But in this way we can, because it’s the same thing, you sit around go, ‘What if they did this, what if this happened, what if this happened,?’ So you get to play again, which is a rare gift for a parent now. I thought those days were long behind me, You know she’s acted with me, but writing with her it’s been this whole incredible different experience than that I’ve absolutely adored because it is like getting to play all over again.”

James Devaney/WireImage

And the shift in their working relationship has been smooth, with Harley saying, “It’s crazy because he’ll say something and I’ll finish a sentence and then he’ll be like, ‘Yes! Or I’ll say something that he’s thinking and he’ll be like, ‘high-five!’ And that’s it, we’re just good creative partners because we have the same brain.”

In case it wasn’t clear by now, Kevin and Harley get along, playing off each other more like friends than a father and daughter.

“Somebody asked me about being an only child the other day and I was like, ‘Well honestly, my dad really took the place of being my sibling,'” Harley shared. “He played video games with me, took me to arcades to get enough tickets to win a bubblegum dispensary machine. We would just always do fun stuff together and we still do so. He’s just like my friend, my pal.”

For Kevin, that’s how he always envisioned he’d be as a father, saying he “rolled a tear” when Harley once told him he felt more like a “really rich cool older brother.”

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After meeting when she interviewed him for USA Today, Kevin married Jennifer Schwalbach Smith in 1999 and the couple welcomed Harley later that same year. (Yes, she’s named after the iconic DC Comics character.) 

“I never felt like truly comfortable being somebody’s father, particularly because like me and Jen we became parents, young, like we were still in our 20s, but like still kids,” Kevin admitted. “I’ve worked in the make-believe business, so I never had to grow up. I’ve been making film since I was 22. So, suddenly somebody’s like, ‘Here, here’s your kid, you’re responsible now.’ Everything I’ve done in my life is to avoid responsibility, there’s no way I’m prepared for this. So I never really fancied myself like the person that could be a dad, the same way when I was like did Q&A at film festivals.”

Paul Butterfield/Getty Images/E! Illustration

When Harley was young, her mom “hung the moon,” but Kevin knew his time would come to become “the favorite parent” after their daughter eventually learned what he did for a living.

“And that day came to pass,” he said. “Suddenly, she was like, ‘You make things? I like making things!’ And suddenly we had a lot more in common.”

That’s not to say Harley wasn’t ever embarrassed by her dad’s movies, especially 2009’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno. 

“It’s not really kosher to have your dad make a film with the word ‘porno’ in it, so it was complicated for a while until I got older,” Harley said. “But as a kid, my friends will come over to my house and be like, ‘Why does your house smell so weird?’ and I’d be like, ‘it’s like a candle,’ and it would just be, like, so much weed. So, I was pretty embarrassed for a while but then, once I got older, then I was like, ‘Oh, you’re cool, I guess.'”

Kevin then joked, “Once she became a stoner, it was all OK.”

But a passion for storytelling and marijuana aren’t the only interests the pair share, as both Kevin and Harley are vegans—though their journeys to that lifestyle were vastly different. 

Rich Polk/Getty Images for IMDb

After starting out as a vegetarian, Harley, an activist for animal rights, adopted veganism four years ago. But it took a serious health scare—a massive heart attack in 2018—for Kevin to go plant-based at his daughter’s demand. 

“The truth is that I did not give my dad an option to not go vegan after his had his heart attack,” she explained. “A lot of the time, animal fats can clog your arteries, and so that’s one of the leading causes of heart attacks. Knowing this, I was like, ‘I’m not risking anything ever again, you have literally no choice.'”

What started off as a two-month trial to appease his daughter became an entirely new lifestyle for Kevin, who went on to lose 51 pounds. But the heart attack had just as much of an impact on Harley.

“I’ve had a very blessed life, but almost losing your dad, like three minutes away from dying, is traumatizing,” she explained. “It’s an insanely traumatizing thing to have happen to you. It was the worst f–king thing that could ever happen to me.”

But three years later, Kevin is healthier than ever and the duo have started a podcast called Vegan Abbatoir, about veganism, though Kevin doesn’t exactly like to use the V-label. 

“The internet I guess is very triggered about veganism,’ he explained.  “I’ve switched to the term plant-based just to take the heat off and stuff.”

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Celebrity Vegans

Still, it’s factoring into their Father’s Day celebration, with the Smith family ordering a special vegan BBQ box from one of their favorite restaurants, Veggie Grill.

“We’ve been looking forward to this for a while,” Harley said.

“We saw the ad and we’re like, ‘Oh my god, we need an occasion!” Kevin added. “Which is so weird because generally we’re, like, ‘It’s Tuesday, let’s over-order!’ For some reason we’re like, ‘That is Father’s Day.'”

Or, as it appears to be in their household, Best Friends Day. 

Jada Pinkett Smith Shares NeverBeforeSeen Poem Written By Tupac Ahead of His 50th Birthday

Jada Pinkett Smith is marking Tupac's 50th birthday with a previously unreleased poem written by the late music legend. She shared his hand-written work that "you may have never heard before."

Jada Pinkett Smith is celebrating what would have been Tupac Shakur‘s 50th birthday by taking a walk “down memory lane,” as she said on social media. 

“Tupac Amaru Shakur would have been 50 midnight tonight!” Jada, 49, wrote on Instagram. “As we prepare to celebrate his legacy … let’s remember him for that which we loved most … his way with words. Here are a few you may have never heard before.” 

For the occasion, The Red Table Talk host shared one of her prized possessions: a hand-written poem from the late rapper, who died in 1996, on lined notebook paper.

“Pac wrote me many letters and many poems. And I don’t think this has ever been published honestly,” Jada said in a video tribute, while revealing one of his unreleased poems, titled “Lost Soulz.” She said he later dropped the song “Lost Souls,” but believes he wrote this “original concept” while incarcerated at Rikers Island in New York.

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Will Smith & Jada Pinkett Smith Through the Years

She explained, “I don’t think he would have minded that I shared this with you guys.”

In blue pen, Tupac wrote out the following poem: “Some say nothing gold can last forever / And 2 believe this [I] need no proof / I have witnessed all that was pure in me / And be changed by the evil men can do / The innocence possessed by children / Once lived inside my soul / But surviving years with criminal peers / Has turned my warm heart to cold / I used 2 dream and fantasize / But now I’m scared 2 sleep / Petrified, not to live or die / But to awaken and still be me / It is true that nothing gold can last / We will all one day see death / When the purest hearts are torn apart / LOST SOULS are all that’s left / Down on my knees I beg of God / To save me from this fate / Let me live to see what was gold in me / Before it is all too late.”

He signed it, “Yours, Tupac.”

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Her mom, Adrienne Norris, commented, “This is beautiful! I believe he would have been a powerful influence in this ‘state of emergency’. RIP.”

Three years ago, Jada opened up about how the death of her longtime friend still affects her. 

“I’ve had a lot of loss. So many of my close friends gone. They didn’t make it to 30. They didn’t make it past 25. A lot of people talk about my relationship with Pac and figure that out. That was a huge loss I my life,” confessed The Matrix 4 star during her Facebook Watch show.

Kevin Mazur Archive/WireImage

She went on, “Because he was one of those people I expected to be here. My upset is more anger because I feel like he left me. and I know that’s not true and it’s a very selfish way to think about it… I really did believe he’d be here for the long run. And when I think about it I still get really mad.”

Last year, her husband Will Smith admitted he was “deeply insecure” about his wife’s friendship with the “Changes” artist. 

As he told Charlamagne tha God, “I could never open up to interact with Pac. You know, because we had a little bit of a thing. You know, they grew up together and they loved each other, but they never had a sexual relationship.”

Will added, “That was a huge regret of mine…I couldn’t handle it. I was the soft rapper from Philly and he was Pac. You know what I mean? I was deeply, deeply insecure, and I wasn’t man enough to handle that relationship.” 

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