Her example illustrated how the media can twist the way people feel about female celebrities.
Jameela Jamil appeared on Friday’s new episode of “Red Table Talk” and revealed to Jada Pinkett Smith there was a time in her life when she had negative feelings about the host.
The panel was having a conversation about how people love to build up celebrities — especially women — only to tear them down when Jamil provided her own personal example involving Smith.
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“It’s a perfect cycle. It can go through any woman who has ever stood out, or spoken out, or just done really well for a while. We build her up. We exaggerate how fantastic, how beautiful, how incredible she is so people start to become a little bit sick of her face,” she began, “and that’s when the destruction becomes easy because we have no empathy left for her.”
“We have no sympathy. We don’t trust her,” Jamil continued, before explaining how that very thing happened to her with Jada herself.
“When I first grew up, I adored you in ‘The Nutty Professor’ and everything you ever did before that. I was obsessed with you,” she said. “And then I started reading headlines about you, around the time that Will was doing ‘Wild Wild West.’ I remember the exact headline that made me be like, ‘I don’t know if I like this woman.’ Forgive me for being this blunt.”
“It was ‘Jada Says ‘Stay Away From Sexy Salma [Hayek]’ in like quotations as if they knew you’d said it in the privacy of your own home,” said Jameela, before Willow and Jada both started to crack up.
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“Never!” exclaimed Jada. “Salma actually happens to be one of my favorite women!”
“But I believed the headlines that I read about you because you were just doing too well and your marriage was too happy,” Jamil added.
When Jada noted she’s been through that cycle “quite a few times” in her life, Jameela praised her for her perseverance and for speaking out.
“You keep going. I love you. And it was because, partially of this show and also just watching you come and speak out about so many things that just made me fall in love with you again because finally you were speaking on your own terms,” continued Jamil. “You had to build your own show to finally not be misrepresented.”
Explaining it was nothing new to her, Smith said she came to expect it a long time ago.
“I’ve come to the understanding that, with things that I’ve gone through and the way I’ve raised my kids, the way I’ve decided to have my marriage, I look at my life I go, ‘I get it. I could see why that wouldn’t be good for you,'” she explained. “But, it’s like, you get to a place where you’re so comfortable with yourself, it’s like, ‘It’s alright. You don’t have to like me. It’s okay.'”
Watch the full episode above, as the women address suicidal thoughts and self-harm, overcoming their own misogyny and overcoming getting too wrapped up in what other people think of them.