Turns out Jada Pinkett Smith almost passed on having Jordyn Woods appear on Red Table Talk.
The Facebook Watch series, hosted by Pinkett Smith, her daughter, Willow Smith, and her mom, Adrienne Banfield-Jones, sees the three tackling tough topics and given fans insight into their lives.
Woods appeared on the show after news broke that she had hooked up with Tristan Thompson, the father of Khloe Kardashian’s daughter, True.
“It actually wasn’t something I wanted to do because it was very close [to home],” Smith revealed to People. “But as time transpired, Jordyn was just like, ‘I really need you in this platform’ and Will [Smith] felt like it was supremely important. So I was like, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’ “
The episode broke records as the most viewed Facebook original episode in its first 24 hours.
Pinkett Smith—whose family has known Woods since she was a child thanks to Woods’s late father, John, working as a sound engineer on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air—said she wanted to give the 21-year-old “a platform to tell her story.”
“Jordyn really felt like it was the only safe place that she could do that interview,” Pinkett Smith said. “That was my intention honestly. I just wanted her to have a platform to tell her story. That’s it.”
“She’s a young beautiful woman inside and out and me having been a young girl, we sometimes get in situations that we don’t necessarily know how to handle,” the actress continued. “You just [try to] help young girls navigate through life, through difficult situations we’ve all come across.”