Jada Pinkett Smith begins her new memoir Worthy in Ojai, California. The Prologue, titled “The Heroine’s Journey” and set in January 2012, finds Pinkett Smith searching for “the Medicine Woman.” The medicine in question is ayahuasca, a plant-based psychedelic that’s been known to have healing, and often transformative, effects. “Before I can tell you what transpired over the next four nights,” she writes, “I must go back to the beginning.” What unfolds over 400-plus pages is her “journey to self-worth.”
And if you’ve been following the latest news, you’ll know that there’s a lot more in the book, too. When I speak to her on a sunny Friday afternoon, she’s in the midst of a massive press cycle. Just a few days before, she revealed that she and her husband Will Smith have been separated since 2016. And then shortly after that, news broke that Tupac Shakur proposed to her from Riker’s Island. That one-two punch, along with several other revelations, has sent social media into a frenzy. It wouldn’t be a celebrity memoir without a little drama.
Also in the book? Her early days in Baltimore; tender moments spent with her grandmother in her garden; landing her breakout role in A Different World; her stint as a rockstar in her metal band Wicked Wisdom; the birth of her two children; the Oscars slap (where the memoir concludes); the status of Red Table Talk (which, she tells me, will be coming back at some point next year); and so much more.
Below, Pinkett Smith spoke to ELLE.com about how Worthy came to be, her theory for why people are so invested in her marriage, and how she achieved five years of therapy in four nights.
When did it first become apparent to you that you wanted to write a memoir?
December 2021. I remember the exact date because I knew right away what the theme was. It was going to be about my journey from unlovable to lovable and from a lack of self-worth to having self-worth. So I started writing my outline and the chapter titles. And then began working on the stories that would be in the chapters to illuminate the theme of each chapter. There were so many fun memories to revisit. I loved going back to my memories of my grandmother. I have so many stories about ’Pac, too. And, of course, that ’90s era of Black Hollywood.
I can imagine that with memoirs, it may be difficult to know when to stop the story. When did you know that it was finished?
[I wanted to end it] after the Oscars because I knew that, without Will, it was going to be hard to tell that particular story. That will be the next chapter and the next journey. He’ll talk about his individual journey, but it’s probably one that we’ll [also] talk about together.
At the end of each chapter, you include short reflections about what happened in the previous one. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in a memoir before. Why did you decide to take that approach?
When I read memoirs and a person is like, “I went from here to there,” I’m like, “Yeah, but how? Leave me some breadcrumbs. I’m trying to get there.” So this was my fantasy of how I’d like to read a memoir of this kind. It’s like, “As I’m sharing this journey with you, I also want to show you some of the work that I did, how I take inventory, and how I think about this particular aspect of my life. Maybe it will offer you something.”
Since the book is about your journey to self-worth, you write about some of the low moments you’ve experienced, including a breakdown. Do you think that being famous exacerbated those feelings?
No, I think they were bound to come up at some point. I think that what the fame did was make me feel a lot of guilt for feeling the way that I did. Because I’m looking around and people are like, “What’s wrong with you? What’s the problem? You got everything.” And I’m like, “Yeah, what is my problem?” So it just filled me with a lot more shame, I think.
I want to briefly touch on the “Hollywood” section of the book where you write about acting in A Different World, Menace II Society, Jason’s Lyric, and so many others. What was it like coming up during that time?
I called it the Golden Era. It was so many of us young Black creatives. It was almost like the gold rush in Hollywood. It was so awesome. It was such an electric moment and there was just so much support from each other. And Hollywood at the time was hungry for our stories. It was a really wonderful time.
