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Jada Pinkett Smith and her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, opened up about their experience with domestic violence on the latest episode of Red Table Talk.
Jada’s mom recounted the abuse she suffered at the hands of Jada’s father, Robsol Pinkett, Jr. and shared the horrifying story with Willow Smith for the first time.
“This will be the first time that Willow’s actually heard these stories about her grandfather, who she knew,” explained Jada.
Adrienne Banfield-Norris was asked to detail one of the most gruesome incidents she can recall.
“There was so many. I have a scar on my back now…He was typically in an altered state when he was abusive like that. Drunk. He gave me a black eye once, I tried to hide it from mommy but she saw it,” she said.
“I do know when enough gets to be enough and you gotta get outta there, I actually ran for my life…He was angry about something, he came home angry, you and I were at mommy and daddy’s house and he came over there and he was pissed off about something … but he started hitting me and he was in a rage.”
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Banfield-Norris explained how she made her getaway from her abusive husband.
“I knew that he wasn’t going to hurt you. He left the room to get you, I went through the bedroom, out the master bath and down the steps and ran across the street to the neighbor,” she said, through tears. “Ran across the street for the neighbor for them to call and get me some help. They called the police. I knew he wasn’t going to harm you. When the police arrived, they were coming in and that was it. I wasn’t trying to deal with it anymore, he was out of control.”
According to Jada, things between her and her father were bad through the end of his life, but she did say that once he was sober, he was a gentle soul. “I have so much compassion in knowing what he had gone through,” she explained.
During the episode, Jada Pinkett Smith revealed that she once pulled a knife on an emotionally abusive ex.
“We were coming from a restaurant and he had been drinking and he was driving and he started getting really aggressive in the car,” she said, before reminding Willow, “This is why I always tell you, pay attention to your surroundings just in case you have to make a quick exit. Thank goodness I knew where I was, I knew how to get out of the car and get to the house.”
She recalled running into the house to change into sweats before she grabbed “a big old knife from the kitchen” and hid.
“He came through the back sliding door, like he was gonna sneak up on me and I came out of his son’s bedroom and I was at the bottom of the hallway like, ‘Don’t come near me,'” she explained. “And he said the quintessential line that you hear in movies all the time, ‘You think I would hurt you?'”
According to Jada, she ended the relationship when she left town to film Spike Lee‘s Girl 6.
“I got on that plane and he never saw me again, until I was with Will Smith,” she said. “That’s when I saw him. Not a bad guy at all, very sweet guy, but just has those tendencies of violence. That was all the sign I needed.”
Check out the full episode, here.