MAKERS sits down with Jada Pinkett Smith to discuss her acting, producing, music, philanthropy and raising a family, and her web series, Red Table Talk. Pinkett Smith grew up in Baltimore with her mom and her grandparents. "My grandmother ...See moreMAKERS sits down with Jada Pinkett Smith to discuss her acting, producing, music, philanthropy and raising a family, and her web series, Red Table Talk. Pinkett Smith grew up in Baltimore with her mom and her grandparents. "My grandmother wanted me to learn about everything. So I had to take piano lessons, I had learn French, I took ballet, I took tap . I took everything you could imagine." After graduating from a performing arts high school, she headed to LA. Pinkett Smith's first auditions in LA were tough. "People loved my energy. But I was rough around the edges," she recalls. But she persisted, and after a few bit parts, won a role on the TV show A Different World. In 1993, she got her big screen break with Menace II Society. "It was so awesome to be able to participate in a movie like that, that expressed what was happening to young people from where I was from, and then to get so much critical acclaim." In 1994, Pinkett Smith was invited to audition for the role of Will Smith's girlfriend on mega TV hit Fresh Prince of Bel Air. She didn't get the part on the show, but she would eventually get it in real life. "I met Will. We became really good friends. And then he went through a divorce. And we decided to date." The pair got married in 1997. In 2018, Pinkett Smith launched Red Table Talk, a web series in which she joins her mother and daughter to take on topics ranging from race and grief to relationships and immigration through the lens of three generations. "We get to learn from each other," she says. "I learn so much from my mother. I learn so much from my daughter." Show episodes have achieved as many as 30 million views on Facebook. Written by
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