What Jada Pinkett Smith’s Critics Don’t Understand

In her new memoir, Worthy, the actor Jada Pinkett Smith quotes the Marvel Comics superhero Wanda Maximoff to point out how women are often punished by double standards.

During a tense exchange with Doctor Strange in the blockbuster Marvel movie Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Maximoff reminds the male title character of how differently she is perceived because of her gender, even though both possess powerful supernatural abilities that can benefit or endanger humanity. “You break the rules, and you become the hero. I do it, and I become the enemy,” Maximoff tells Strange.

For weeks, Pinkett Smith has been the subject of widespread criticism and mockery over revelations in her 400-page memoir—including the jaw-dropping assertion that she and her husband, the A-list actor Will Smith, have been secretly separated since 2016. For describing her sometimes-messy and seemingly unconventional marriage as she saw it, she has become the villain—as if she had somehow forfeited the right to tell her own story in her own way.

[Read: The fury of Chris Rock]

In his 2021 memoir, Will, her husband described some of the difficulties in his marriage and was forthright about his own contribution to them. He also revealed that he and Pinkett Smith had separated for a time a decade earlier—though he did not define what separated meant for them—but he hasn’t faced harsh condemnation for speaking about their problems. She has.

“How Jada Pickett Smith is moving, it don’t really make you want to be that close with a woman,” the hip-hop star Rick Ross said via Instagram Live last week. “It will really make you reconsider ever being married. Damn, baby. You talking about so much personal business.” The onslaught of criticism directed at Pinkett Smith inspired a slew of internet memes, many of which have had the same central themes: that she is oversharing and, through her candor about the disappointment she has felt in her marriage, emasculating her husband in the process.

Having now read Worthy in its entirety, I find all the criticism of Pinkett Smith horribly unfair. Unfortunately, when Black women take the courageous step of voicing their pain, trauma, frustrations, and vulnerabilities, they are routinely met with derision, skepticism, and disdain. The message they receive is: Shut up and prioritize everyone else’s needs but yours, even if it means losing important pieces of yourself.

In her book, Pinkett Smith willingly accepts responsibility for some of the trouble in her marriage. She says she made the mistake of neglecting her mental health, to the point of experiencing intense depression and constant suicidal thoughts. By going to therapy and attending ayahuasca retreats—at which she confronted some of her darkest demons with the help of medicinal psychedelics—she realized that she was constantly holding Smith to an impossible standard and expecting him to save her from herself.

“Admitting to growing pains is severely frowned upon,” Pinkett Smith writes.

When she got married, Pinkett Smith was just 26 and was pregnant with the couple’s first child, Jaden. As she writes in Worthy, “We were starting our journey after being thrust together into expanding families, booming careers, and big shifts in fortune and responsibility.” She and her husband “were trying to figure it all out under the increasingly hot lights that come with being celebrities and having to live up to a fantasy version of married life.”

In his memoir, Smith shared strikingly similar thoughts: “Our marriage wasn't working,” Smith recalls. “We were suffering the brutal death of our romantic fantasies, the burning away of the idealistic illusion of the perfect marriage and the perfect family.”

The couple undoubtedly helped curate a positive public image of their relationship, and long before the phrase relationship goals became a fixture in the pop-culture lexicon, the Smiths seemed to embody that aspiration. To think they were immune to marital problems would have been naive. But Pinkett Smith seems to be getting the blame for ruining the illusion.

A series of incidents and gossipy rumors in recent years have turned many people’s opinions against her. In 2020, the singer August Alsina, a friend of Jaden’s, told an interviewer that he and Pinkett Smith had been involved in a romantic relationship—a claim that she initially denied. Pinkett Smith later confirmed her relationship with Alsina when she and her husband appeared on Pinkett Smith’s popular online show, Red Table Talk. Although Pinkett Smith explained in the episode that Smith knew about her and Alsina’s relationship and that it occurred during their separation, that wasn’t enough to change the opinions of those who believed she’d undermined her marriage. “People need something to blame,” Pinkett Smith told People recently.

The public scrutiny of the Smiths’ marriage intensified after Smith’s onstage confrontation with Chris Rock during the 2022 Academy Awards. The comedian, who was hosting the ceremony, jokingly referred to Pinkett Smith as “G.I. Jane” because of her shaved head. Seconds later, Smith walked to the stage and slapped Rock. What Rock and many others didn’t know was that Pinkett Smith has alopecia, a hair-loss condition.

[Jemele Hill: The two Americas debating Will Smith and Chris Rock]

In her book, Pinkett Smith adds much more context, explaining that Rock and her husband have had an antagonistic relationship for years, and she was just as surprised as everyone else by her husband’s volatile reaction—primarily because at that point, the two had been living largely separate lives for years, which included living in separate homes.

Regardless of their unorthodox arrangement, the Smiths have been adamant that they aren’t divorcing. In fact, Smith surprised his wife last week at her book-tour stop in Baltimore, her hometown, and publicly declared his support for her, which I’m sure had some people rolling their eyes. Smith, however, seems to embrace the complexities of their relationship. At the event, he described their relationship as “brutiful”—that is, “brutal and beautiful at the same time.” That Smith has opted to stand with his wife, despite everything that has come to light about their marriage, is disorienting and even upsetting to the people who wish Smith despised her instead of accepting her flaws and raw honesty.

But Pinkett Smith is not a villain, and her husband is not a victim. Despite what the headlines suggest, Worthy is not a salacious tell-all. It’s a complicated, compelling account of Pinkett Smith’s journey to healing, acceptance, and self-respect.