Jada Pinkett Smith will not be bringing “The Slap” to the Red Table anytime soon

Since Oscar night 2022, which by our calculations occurred both 105 years ago and five minutes ago, many wondered whether or not Jada Pinkett Smith would be bringing Will to the Table, the Red Table, that is. In recent years, Pinkett Smith’s wildly popular Facebook Watch talk show, Red Table Talk, has become a space for airing Smith family grievances in front of her dedicated audience. However, one of the issues the host is sidestepping is her husband’s infamous open-handed response to comedian Chris Rock’s joke about Pinkett Smith’s alopecia.

The winner of the 2022 Oscar for Best Actor, Smith has since offered a public apology and his resignation from the Academy, which shortly thereafter, banned him for 10 years. But Red Table Talk’s fifth season premiere episode today didn’t get into all that. In fact, an opening title card warned viewers that there would be no Slap talk on this show because “the Smith family has been focused on deep healing.”

“Considering all that has happened in the last few weeks, the Smith family has been focused on deep healing,” the opening titles signed by Jada read. “Some of the discoveries around our healing will be shared at the table when the time calls. Until then the table will continue offering itself to powerful, inspiring, and healing testimonies like that of our incredibly impressive first guest.”

Instead, the episode has Jada, daughter Willow, and mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris (aka Gammy) interviewing Janelle Monáe, which is all well and good because who doesn’t love Janelle Monáe. But people really wanted to hear something about The Slap. Alas, the season of healing is specifically about Janelle Monáe.

Many assumed that Jada would be bringing Will to the Table as she did regarding their infamous “entanglement,” i.e., the revelation that their open-ish marriage included space for singer August Alsina. The disclosure broke the dam and flooded the internet with Smith-related confessions nobody wanted to hear, like how Will Smith used to puke when he had an orgasm. “I had sex with so many women, and it was so constitutionally disagreeable to the core of my being, that I developed a psychosomatic reaction to having an orgasm,” he wrote in his memoir, Will. “It would literally make me gag and sometimes even vomit.” Yeah, nobody asked, dude.

Following Oscar night, Jada Pinkett Smith announced on Instagram that this was “a season for healing and I’m here for it.” But, to everything (turn, turn, turn), there is a season. So maybe next season will be a season for confrontations on the only show anybody has ever heard of on Facebook Watch.