Doing what’s best for their family. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith said they staged an “intervention” for their son Jaden Smith after his drastic weight loss.
The couple revealed on the Monday, September 23, episode of Jada’s Facebook Watch series, Red Table Talk, that they became concerned for Jaden’s health after the “Icon” rapper, 21, started to become thinner and develop “dark circles” under his eyes due to his vegan diet.
“Will and I had a bit of an intervention with Jaden because he’s a vegan now, but we realized he wasn’t getting enough protein,” the Gotham actress, 48, said in the episode, which also included her daughter, Willow Smith, stepson, Trey Smith, and mom, Adrienne Banfield-Jones.
She continued, “He was wasting away. He just looked drained. He was just depleted. He wasn’t getting the nutrients.”
The Seven Pounds actor, 50, added that there were other physical changes to Jaden beyond his weight loss.
“There was even grayness to his skin,” he said. “We got really nervous.”
Jaden — who explained that he’s vegetarian and not vegan — revealed that his body changes came from him consuming only one or two meals a day.
“I also just wanna say that I’m vegetarian. I’ve tried to be vegan,” he said. “I’ll go vegan for a week or so, but for the past year, I’ve been vegetarian.”
He continued, “I was just eating, like, two meals a day … maybe one. Maybe just that one big meal, and I’m like, ‘Oh, you know, I didn’t get around to it.’”
In the end, the “Never Say Never” rapper’s family is happy that he seems healthier after recovering from his harmful eating habits.
“You’re definitely looking better now,” the Aladdin actor told his son.
This isn’t the first time Will and Jada have gotten candid about their children’s health struggles. In a Red Table Talk episode in May 2018, Willow, 18, revealed that she used to cut herself after a depression following her 2010 hit “Whip My Hair,” which she released when she was only 9 years old.
“I honestly feel like I lost my sanity at one point,” she said. “It was after that whole ‘Whip My Hair’ thing. I had just stopped doing singing lessons. I was kind of just in this gray area of, ‘Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?’”
She continued, “After the tour and the promotion and all of that, they wanted me to finish my album. And I was like, ‘I’m not gonna do that.’ After all of that kind of settled down, I was listening to a lot of dark music. It was just so crazy. I was just plunged into this black hole. I was, like, cutting myself and doing crazy things.”
The “Wait a Minute!” singer’s reveal that she cut herself surprised her mom, who didn’t know about the self-harm until the interview.
“What? Really? When were you cutting yourself? I didn’t see that part? Cutting yourself where?” Jada said.
Willow then showed her mom her scars on her wrists and forearms. “There’s still a little something there. Totally lost my sanity for a moment there,” she said. “I never talk about it because it was such a short, weird point in my life, but you have to pull yourself out of it.”
