Gam Slams Olivia Jade Red Table Talk Interview: ‘It Was Frustrating’

Adrienne Banfield Norris didn’t hold back giving her opinion of the recent “Red Table Talk” featuring Olivia Jade Giannulli.

During an interview on the “Keep It” podcast, Jada Pinkett Smith’s mom got candid about the social media influencer speaking out for the first time after her parents, Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli, were sentenced to prison for their role in the college admissions scandal.

“It was frustrating, but at the end of the day, I felt like people understood how I felt,” the co-host of the Facebook Watch series, 67, explained. “There were some things about it that were a little frustrating. I felt like as a 21-year-old young adult, that she needed to be way more aware of what’s going on in the world, and that was a little frustrating.”

“I heard people make comments, like, ‘Well, kids don’t watch the news.’ Please,” Adrienne continued. “The news on TV is not the only place where you understand what’s going on with the world and if you think that then you’re old! Because young people are not relying on the news — my generation is not relying on the news. I’m on my phone, on social media all the time.”

Olivia Jade came on the show to address the fallout from the scam, which included her parents paying $500,000 to pass Olivia Jade and her sister Bella off as athletic recruits to the USC crew team, even though neither competitively rowed before.

“There’s just a lot of education she needs to do for herself,” Adrienne said on the podcast. “But I understand that that’s the world they’re in. Her life experiences have not put her in the space where she needs to be concerned about those kinds of things, really. I don’t really know how to address that because it is about how you’re raised and what you’re exposed to.”

Ahead of Olivia Jade’s appearance on “Red Table Talk,” Adrienne voiced her displeasure at allowing the Instagram star to have a platform on the show.

“I found it really ironic that she chose three Black women to reach out to for her redemption story,” she said at the time, “I feel like, here we are, a white woman coming to Black women for support when we don’t get the same from them. It’s bothersome to me on so many levels. Her being here is the epitome of white privilege to me.”

At one point in the show, Olivia Jade explained, “I’m not trying to victimize myself, I don’t want pity, I don’t deserve pity. We messed up. I just want a second chance to be like, I recognize I messed up and for so long I wasn’t able to talk about this because of the legalities behind this. I never got to say, ‘I’m sorry that this happened.’ I think everybody feels that way in my family right now.”

Adrienne went on to explain why “different people in the community” were upset by the “epitome of white privilege.”

“For me, it’s like, there is so much violent dehumanization that the Black community has to go through on a daily basis, there is so much devastation, particularly this year, 2020, with the pandemic and everything being brought to the table, there’s so much inequality and inequity that when you come to the table with something like this, it’s like child, please.”

“I’m exhausted,” she continued. “I’m exhausted with everything we have to deal with as a community and I just don’t have the energy to put into the fact that you lost your endorsements or you’re not in school right now. Because, at the end of the day, you’re going to be okay, your parents are going to go in and they’re gonna do their 60 days and they’re gonna pay their fine and you guys will go on and be okay and live your life and there’s so many of us that it’s not going to be that situation. It just makes it very difficult right now for me to care in this atmosphere we are in right now.”

The conversation ended with Adrienne telling Olivia Jade, “I don’t want you to take it personally, it’s not really about you.”

And Jada added that she was “really happy” to see the young entrepreneur breaking her past patterns with a new awareness.