'I'M READY TO TALK - JADA PINKETT SMITH

THE MOVIE STAR AND AUTHOR OF A NEW MEMOIR HAS DEALT WITH SCANDAL, GRAPPLED WITH SUICIDAL THOUGHTS AND GAINED CLARITY WITH THE SUPPORT OF HER FAMILY. NOW SHE'S STANDING ON HER OWN TWO FEET-AND SPEAKING FOR HERSELF

- JASON SHEELER 

"Here we go," Jada Pinkett Smith whispers to herself as the L.A. photo studio goes quiet. She knows everyone has been waiting 18 months for her to say something-and now it's time.

The actress says growing up on the rough streets of Baltimore prepared her for Hollywood. But no one could have predicted what unfolded at the 2022 Academy Awards, where she watched her husband of 24 years, Will Smith, slap Chris Rock on the Oscar stage after Rock made a joke about Jada's shaved head (she suffers from alopecia). Like many people watching the incident unfold on live TV, she didn't believe it was real at first. "I thought, "This is a skit.' I was like, 'There's no way that Will hit him,"" Jada, 52, recalls. "It wasn't until Will started to walk back to his chair that I even realized it wasn't a skit."

The first words she uttered to Smith once they were alone after the show were "Are you okay?" The answer is a work in progress, one that Jada has written about-among many other topics, including her difficult childhood and their complicated marriage-in her riveting new book Worthy, out Oct. 17 (see excerpt). "I'm going to be by his side," she says of her 55-year-old husband, "but also allow him to have to figure this out for himself." 

As for Rock, who also made a joke at Jada's expense while hosting the 2016 Oscars and whom she hasn't spoken to since the 2022 ceremony, she says, "That's what comedians do. I am not here to make any judgment on how people decide to express themselves. I've had my feelings hurt a lot by Chris, but at the end of the day, being in the spotlight, it comes with the territory."