Jada brings herself to the table. Will brings the support. And the press brings the judgement.
Do you know what's f*cked? Celebrities can't f*ck without media foolishness.
I don’t care about your sex life. Correction: I don’t care about your sex life until you start making moral pronouncements about other people’s consensual, legal, and private sex lives. When that happens, I want to know how you fuck, who you fuck, why you fuck them, and what the fuck is wrong with you. Unfortunately, the media is full of hypocritical fuckers. The worst kind of fuckers. Fuckers that don’t understand or practice consent in their own sex lives. Fuckers who talk a lot of moralistic fuckery about who other people fuck.
In recent weeks — but also months and years — Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith have been a focus of attention by the media globally. The big accusation or insinuation was that Will and Jada were cheating on each other then that they had an open relationship, which the media always frames as destined to fail, then that there were crisis talks and arguments, and on and on and on. And all the time, as the press is addicted to doing, unnamed ‘friends’ of Jada and Will were quoted liberally. I bet not a single ‘friend’ has said a word. Celebrities have a lot of people around them who play-act friendship but have nothing to do with the notion.
But something extraordinary has happened. For some time, Jada has had a Facebook Watch show called Red Table Talk. And she has used that platform to totally take the press out of the power seat in the unnecessary discussion of her marriage to Will Smith. The new episode does that in 12 minutes.
Now ‘we’ — though we don’t have any right to know this — know that the pair separated for a time, that Jada had another relationship, and so did Will. They then realised that as parents, friends, and lovers, they still needed each other. So they’re back together and are able to talk to each other seemingly in public as well as they apparently do in private.
The media will not do well with this. They will be very angry. Because Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith a) had sex outside of marriage but weren’t hypocritical b) have worked it out and c) are willing, to be honest with each other and more people. It has taken the power out of the hands of gossip villains like The Sun’s Dan Wootton and the internet scoundrel Perez Hilton. Their sneaky insinuations are broken down and their ‘access’ means nothing.
Jada and Will doing the show and having the conversation will be framed as Hollywood spin, but viewers can see the truth — it’s people taking control of a story about themselves, despite them not wanting to have it in public. The media craves one thing more than anything else; it wants power. Jada and Will have reclaimed that power and the media is going to be hungry for revenge.
I’m Team Pinkett-Smith.