Since launching her popular Facebook Watch talk show, Red Table Talk, in 2018, Jada Pinkett Smith has been open about her life to connect with and promote healing for her audience.
In a new episode of the show, Pinkett Smith sits down with Gwyneth Paltrow to discuss maintaining a healthy sex life. The Academy Award-winning actress stopped by Red Table Talk to promote her new Netflix series, Sex, Love & goop.
On the series, inspired by Paltrow’s modern lifestyle brand, goop, couples learn lessons and methods to enhance their relationships through more pleasurable sex and deeper intimacy.
“It’s hard,” Pinkett Smith told Paltrow. “The thing Will and I talk about a lot is the journey. We started in this at a very young age, you know, 22 years old. That’s why the accountability part really hit for me because I think you expect your partner to know [what you need], especially when it comes to sex. It’s like, ‘Well, if you love me, you should know. If you love me, you should read my mind.’ That’s a huge pitfall.”
In response, Paltrow noted, “Isn’t it weird, though? It’s like someone doesn’t read your mind, and we feel crushed.”
“Crushed!” Pinkett Smith replied, adding, “You tell me what you need. Tell me what you want, and on top of it, I know that I have to be accountable to do the same … I really try.”
She noted that accountability was “uncomfortable” but “deeply healthy” when it comes to sex, which can often be based in fantasy and not reality.
Pinkett Smith’s assertions and some of the social media chatter about them prompted the 50-year-old star to take to Twitter to clarify.
“Only because I got time today. Stop making up headlines,” she wrote. “Watch the @RedTableTalk I did with @GwynethPaltrow for yourselves. Will and I have NEVER had an issue in the bedroom. Thank you.”
The couple, who have been married for 23 years and have two children together, has frequently discussed what they call their “unconventional marriage.”
In a deeply personal interview with GQ to promote his new memoir, Will, as well as the forthcoming film, King Richard, Will Smith talked about his relationship with Jada.
“We have given each other trust and freedom, with the belief that everybody has to find their own way,” said Smith. “And marriage for us can’t be a prison. And I don’t suggest our road for anybody. I don’t suggest this road for anybody. But the experiences that the freedoms that we’ve given one another and the unconditional support, to me, is the highest definition of love.”
Smith noted that for himself and for Jada, “The pursuit of truth is the only way to be happy in this lifetime. And we sort of came to the agreement that authenticity was the release from the shackles of fame and public scrutiny.”
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