Jada Pinkett Smith fired back at Ana Navarro and the haters who claimed her memoir was “emasculating and embarrassing.”
On The Breakfast Club, Jada, 52, was asked what she felt about Ana’s recent criticism of her new memoir Worthy. During multiple episodes of The View, Ana, 51, claimed that Jada’s husband, Will Smith, was an “emotional prisoner.”
“Well, I think if she took time to read the book, you know? I think that … if you wanna just read headlines, I could see how that could be confusing. But the book is right here,” Jada said.
“You have two books you can read, actually. You can read my book and Will’s book.”
For context, on Oct. 11, Ana said she thinks Jada uses “bombshells” only as clickbait-y stunts “to sell books” and that the entire process feels “unseemly.”
Ana brought it up again during an Oct. 23 episode, adding, “I’m done with the Jada thing, and I’m done defending Will because Will is out there supporting her. I think Will is being held emotionally prisoner. But you know what? It’s their stuff.”
Ana’s co-host Sunny Hostin suggested she read Worthy, to which she replied, “I don’t wanna read the book. I don’t wanna give them another dime for her emasculating and embarrassing him to everybody in the world.”
Jada responded to Ana’s unfair judgment with reason. “People have a right to their opinions. I always know that anybody who’s saying that hasn’t really done their homework,” she added.
“But, you gotta expect it too because of what the headlines are, what ‘clickbait’ is,” Jada continued. “Will knows what it is, I know what it is, my kids know what it is, and, more importantly, Great Supreme does too. That’s really all I’m concerned with at the end of the day.”
Jada and Will share two children, Jaden, 25, and Willow, 23. Will is also father to Trey Smith, 31, from his previous marriage to Sheree Zampino.
Ana and the other critics can keep holding Jada to this biased standard of “oversharing” and “emasculating” a grown man because Jada isn’t checking for the haters. “I let it go. Because let me tell you — I’ve been there.”
To me, all the criticism of Jada and her memoir feels misogynistic and anti-Black coded, and I’m glad to elaborate. For example, celebrity memoirs drop every month. In fact, Britney Spears’s explosive tell-all The Woman in Me was released the same month.
I take issue with critics’ use of the words “emasculating” concerning Will Smith. Will is one of the highest-paid actors and a household name, but he’s also a Black man.
Second, there’s this idea, which I believe is rooted in misogyny, that men are not responsible for their own shortcomings or failures. Any mistake, whether it be as grave as violence or as common as divorce, is perhaps a result of the woman’s failures. Any boy who grows up to become problematic is often said to be failed by his mother.
Will is competent in his relationship with Jada. As someone who read both their memoirs (his a couple of years ago), his support for his wife’s memoir is not a result of “emotional imprisonment” or “emasculation,” and to suggest so is whack and borderline bigotry.
I applaud Jada’s response that critics should do their homework instead of trumpeting rhetoric rooted in bigotry. If not, the critics might come off as “embarrassing.”
I said what I said.