Jada Pinkett Smith’s Wildest Quotes and Confessions in ‘Worthy’ Memoir: Will Smith, Tupac and More

Jada Was a ‘Blessed Child Of 2 Addicts’

Jada opened her memoir recalling her childhood with parents Adrienne Banfield-Norris and Robsol Pinkett Jr. Her mother was just 17 years old when she got pregnant. “Neither [of my parents] were ever fully available to me,” she wrote. “When I go in search of the origins of my broken heart, it is a sense of not being a priority to the two people who gave me life that creates a fracture in my feelings of worth.” Jada claimed that her father was physically abusive to her mother, which led them to divorce soon after getting married.

Both of Jada’s parents struggled with drug addiction. She recalled her father telling her, “I’m a drug addict and a criminal, so I can’t be your father.” Jada also called her mom a “high functioning heroin addict.” However, Adrienne has since gotten clean and is more than 30 years sober.

Drug-Dealing Teenage Years

In Worthy, Jada opened up about selling drugs in Baltimore as a teenager. “If anyone was going to give me the trappings of a good life, it was going to be me,” she wrote. “I came to the conclusion that I could be as successful a drug dealer as any man.”

Jada stopped selling drugs after being robbed twice in high school. She left for college at the University of North Carolina shortly after the second robbery.

Jada and Tupac’s 1st Kiss Proved They Had No ‘Chemistry’

Jada’s friendship with Tupac Shakur was heavily dissected in the book. The two met when they were students at the same high school. However, there was nothing romantic between them.

“We became inseparable from the moment we met,” Jada recalled. “We were kindred spirits in so many ways, and although Pac may have had an attraction to me in the beginning, the more time we spent together, the more we could both see that there was no romantic chemistry between us…at all.”

Since the two were so young at the time, Jada said it was “confusing” that they were not attracted to each other in a romantic way. “Hence the day he got on my last nerve about the possibility of being more than friends and I dared him to kiss me,” Jada shared. “He wiped his lips hard and said, ‘What the f—?’ I laughed my ass off. ‘See I told you, dummy.’”

She also added, “I think God knew that if sexual attraction had been possible between us, we would have left each other in a special kind of ruin.”

When Jada Met Will

Jada and Will Smith first crossed paths when she auditioned for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. She remembered running into Will in a department store with her mother after the audition, and said that Adrienne asked her, “Why can’t you be with somebody nice like him?”

Jada’s friend Duane Martin later told her that Will wanted to fly out to meet her while she was filming a movie in North Carolina. Will wanted Jada to play his girlfriend on Fresh Prince, but she was in the midst of a burgeoning film career at the time and did not want to return to television.

At a later date, Will called Jada while still married to his first wife, Sheree Zampino. Jada told Will not to call her anymore because her mom didn’t think they should be talking while he was married. A year went by before they spoke again. After Will divorced Sheree, he called up Jada and asked if she was seeing anyone. When she said no, he responded, “Good, you are seeing me now.”

Is Jada Bisexual?

Jada addressed buzz about her sexuality in the memoir. “The truth is, during those early years of exploration in Hollywood, I had a few sexual experiences with women, only to realize that when it comes to sex, I love men.”

Tupac Proposed Marriage to Jada

Jada stayed in touch with Tupac while he was serving time in prison on sexual abuse charges in the mid 90s. Despite realizing that they had no romantic feelings for each other in the past, Tupac told Jada that he felt they were meant to be husband and wife.

Jada recalled Tupac writing her a letter saying, “I want to commit myself to you. I want to marry you.” He even went as far as calling her mother up and asking her for Jada’s hand in marriage. Although Jada said she “played with the possibility” of marrying Tupac, she eventually turned him down when he admitted that he would want her to come for conjugal visits. Following the rejection, though, they were able to get to a “place of acceptance,” she wrote.

Jada Describes Will as Being Like a ‘Drug’ for Her

Before getting together with Will, Jada said she began having suicidal ideations and was put on Prozac after seeing a therapist. She went off the drug in the early stages of her romance with Will.

“In hindsight, it’s obvious we were showing each other red flags,” she admitted. “He was freshly separated and running from having to face how and why his marriage had dissolved. And I was about to make him my new Prozac while running from the reality that I was clinically depressed.”

Jada Recalls Tupac’s Death

Before Tupac’s death, Jada got into an argument with the rapper that led to them not talking for a year. In Worthy, she revealed how much Tupac dying impacted her.

“I never once saw myself on this planet without him here, somewhere on it,” she wrote. “I felt a huge piece of love for me leave the world, a part of myself gone.” She admitted that she was glad she didn’t visit him while he was in a coma because she didn’t want to “share space” with Suge Knight in the hospital room while Tupac was dying.

Jada Felt Like The ‘Runner-Up’ in Early Years With Will

Jada admitted to feeling like “the alternate” or “runner-up” to Will’s first wife, Sheree, in the early years of her marriage to the actor. She recounted a time where they “broke up on the spot” after a fight during the beginning stages of their relationship.

“[Our arguments] verged on being too sanitized and controlled, to the point where I’d lose genuine expression and suppress deep feelings.” She also added, “By the time we were married with children, it was obvious to me that Will and I had very different perspectives about the trappings of fame. Will wanted to be one of the biggest names in Hollywood and was always surprised when I didn’t.”

This “clash” in the vision of what happiness looked like became the most “profound difference” between Will and Jada, she said. “Will was living his dream, and that meant I must be living mine too, through him. He couldn’t understand why I was often unhappy.”

Did Will and Jada Have an Open Marriage?

Jada said she felt like the “love and connection” between her and Will was often put on the back burner throughout their marriage – especially when he was working with other “beautiful” women.

“[We] developed a relationship of transparency, which is different from an ‘open’ relationship,” she wrote. “This agreement was never, ‘You can sleep with whomever you want, whenever you want.’ Instead, it was, ‘Hey, when those temptations are in play, let’s trust each other to come together in partnership with the truth, talk and work as partners through them.’” However, Jada admitted that she would’ve made “adjustments” to this if she could go back in time.

Is Jada a Scientologist?

After Jada’s father came back into her life in 1999, she eventually enrolled him in a Scientology program called Narconon to get help for his drug addiction. She admitted to studying Scientology, but said she never became a member. She stopped Scientology studies after being advised to do so by her father.

Jada Hit ‘Rock Bottom’ Around Her 40th Birthday

Jada turned 40 in 2011 and said she began to feel like she was hitting “rock bottom.” She recalled becoming depressed and suicidal around this time and said the “breaking point” was when Will wanted to throw her an “extravagant” party, but she wanted no part of it.

By 2016, Jada said she realized that she and Will had “irreconcilable differences” and revealed that they “split up every way except legally.” In 2023, Jada said she told Will that he was the “king of [her] heart,” but admitted that the declaration was not romantic, as they remained separated.

Jada’s ‘Entanglement’ With August Alsina

In the memoir, Jada recalled coming clean about her “entanglement” with August Alsina in 2020. She looked back at the Red Table Talk episode she filmed with Will about the ordeal

“Although at this point, Will had been free as a bird for the last four years, living his life on his own terms, he seemed to convey that he had been done wrong,” Jada wrote. “It was clear Will and I were no longer in alignment.” She said she wished she’d stopped the Red Table Talk conversation when she realized she and Will weren’t on the same page.

The 2022 Oscars Slap Heard Around the World

Jada admitted she was “confused” when Will slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars, and said she even thought it could’ve been a pre-planned skit. However, seeing Will stand up for her made her want to be a “ride or die” for him. “Conflict can indeed amplify love and passion,” she wrote. “[The slap] helped me learn how to walk hand-in-hand with Will.”