Jada Pinkett Smith has spoken out about her anxiety, saying she only recently realized she suffers from it.
The actor opened up in the most recent episode of her Facebook show Red Table Talk - which was filmed before her husband infamously slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars ceremony last month.
Pinkett Smith, 50, was joined by her mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris, her daughter Willow, Kim Bassinger, and Ireland Baldwin, around the legendary red table.
She explained that, while she has been biting her fingernails and chewing her cuticles for years, she only realized that the habits were anxiety-related when raising her daughter. But after re-evaluating her behavior, Jada recalled thinking: "Oh, well of course I probably have some anxiety."
Willow described speaking to her mom about the realization. "Recently, we had a talk, and she was like, 'I never knew that I actually experienced anxiety,'" said the 21-year-old musician, adding: "She was pushing it down for so many years like she had no idea."
Jada's mom noted that she had never connected the dots either, saying: "I never identified it as anxiety."
It was only when Willow insisted she was suffering from anxiety that Jada finally considered a link between her bad habits and the condition.
Elsewhere in the talk show, Willow opened up about her mom's initial resistance to the idea that either of them was suffering from mental illness.
"It was rough," she said. "I feel like when I was growing up, she didn’t understand my anxiety. Because she, growing up, had seen her friends die … she had been through so much stuff that my issues, to her, kind of felt like … [smaller].”
"And that was very frustrating for me as a child, because I was like, 'How can you not see my internal, emotional struggle?'" Willow added.
The budding rockstar went on to say that she had had to "forgive" her mom for the way she handled things, saying: "I had to forgive her a little bit for being like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah … I get it, but it’s really not that bad.'"
