On the talkshow Red Table Talk (available on Facebook Watch), the actor Jada Pinkett Smith invites a guest into her home and gets them to open up about whatever calamity has befallen them and knocked the planet off its axis. In her role as all-knowing sage, she then dispenses advice in order that they – and, by extension, we – might better navigate the rocky road to self-love. Sitting alongside Pinkett Smith during these tear-sodden heart-to-hearts are her mother Adrienne Banfield-Jones and – occasionally – daughter Willow Smith, making this a resolutely family affair. Imagine the Osbournes if they ditched the dressing gowns and had their mouths scrubbed with carbolic soap.
The backdrop to this is the Smith clan’s Malibu mansion, which comes festooned with candles and up-lit objets d’art. While our host and her mother dress as if it’s cocktail hour at The Ritz, Willow, a teen with the wisdom of a septuagenarian Himalayan guru, favours frayed plaid shirts and a raised eyebrow. The conversation takes place around a glossy red table that is now up there in the TV furniture firmament with Game of Thrones’s Iron Throne or Mastermind’s leather chair. It is the hallowed zone where guts are spilled and souls are saved.
To the guests, then, which have so far included Pinkett Smith’s Girls Trip co-star Tiffany Haddish on the perils of fame and a cancelled date with Drake, and a special two-parter called Becoming Mr and Mrs Smith, in which Jada discusses the ups and downs of marriage with her husband Will Smith (Him: “You’re not breaking me today, Jada.” Her: “I’ve broken you enough.”) Family dramas are routinely pored over, from Willow’s unexpected confession about self-harm to the difficulties of blended families examined during a conversation with Will’s ex-wife, Sheree Fletcher.
In the latest episode, Pinkett Smith interviews Jordyn Woods, a model and athleisure designer who – stay with me here - was Kylie Jenner’s BFF until she went to a party and hooked up with Kylie’s half-sister Khloé Kardashian’s basketball-player boyfriend, Tristan, since when she’s been persona non grata at Hollywood’s top table. To the naked eye, their tryst may appear unremarkable, a storm in a celebrity teacup, but that would be to foolishly underestimate its significance as a meteor crashing into the Kardashian nerve centre.
And so it is with great solemnity and ceremony that Pinkett Smith invites Woods to “tell your truth … tell it through the lens of what your part has been, because that’s the only part you can change”. Hands are held, tears are shed, meaningful pauses abound. Honestly, Frost/Nixon had nothing on this. “I’m no homewrecker. I would never try to hurt someone’s home,” sobs Woods, conjuring images of her setting about Kardashian scatter cushions with a bread knife. Meanwhile, Pinkett Smith delivers gentle homilies about love and redemption and reassures her that “all will be well”. Phew. Had the Barnier-May talks been conducted not in the corridors of Brussels but in Pinkett Smith’s living room, you can be damned sure we wouldn’t be in the pickle we’re in now.
