Jada Pinkett Smith’s Mom Opened Up About Losing Someone To COVID-19 While On The ‘Red Table Talk’

Updated December 19, 2020.

*Trigger Warning: this piece discusses domestic violence and rape and may be upsetting for some.*

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text or call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at1-800-656-4673. Or do an online chat.

If you’ve yet to have someone in your life personally affected by COVID-19 count yourself lucky. After all, since the outbreak, there have been 77,307,971 COVID-19 related deaths.

In a recent interview Gammy, AKA Adrienne Banfield-Norris, revealed that someone close to her passed away from COVID-19.

During a recent episode of “Red Table Talk” Adrienne her personal experiences with heartbreak.

“This year has really been the passing of my mother-in-law. It was [due to] COVID. It was very painful. And then not being able to gather and celebrate her life the way we ordinarily would,” Adrienne revealed. “I have had [a lot of romantic heartbreak in my life]. This one particular failure in one of my marriages that I really built up in my head that this was my one true love and I’ll never love like this again. It wasn’t a divorce that I wanted but at the end of the day when you really, really look at the relationship honestly it’s like, ‘This one’s going nowhere but to divorce.’ I really feel like you have to kind of take some time and be honest with yourself.”

Adrienne has been open about her relationship with her ex-husband in the past.

In an October episode of “The Red Table Talk,” Adrienne Banfield-Norris revealed that she had been raped in her marriage to Pinkett Smith’s father.

Rape by a spouse or a partner is an act of physical violence that is often overlooked and under talked about. While there’s been a growth in international attention regarding marital rape it is often widely considered a “gray area” subject even in the many countries where it is illegal. Actress Jada Pinkett Smith learned a hard truth about marital rape affected her parents’ marriage this week in an exclusive clip on the Red Table Talk. Speaking with her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, and her daughter Willow Smith, the actress spoke about non-consensual sex with partners.

“So, Gam, you feel like nowhere in your history in regards to sexual intimacy have you felt like you had a sexual experience that was not necessarily consensual,” Pinkett Smith noted.

Banfield-Norris admitted “I have, I have, but it was also with my husband. Your dad, actually… So that’s really gray.”

Taking a moment to process, Pinkett Smith paused and that asked her mother to clarify “You’re basically saying you had non-consensual sex with my father,” she replied to her mother.

Banfield-Norris has noted how she became pregnant with Pinkett Smith in high school and married the actress’s father, Robsol Pinkett Jr soon after. After several months of marriage, the two divorced. In 2018, Pinkett Smith revealed in another episode of Red Table Talk that her mother had endured domestic violence from Robsol.

“I knew that my mother and my father had a very violent relationship early on,” Pinkett Smith explained. “She has a couple scars on her body that, as a child, I was just curious. I was like, ‘Oh, Mommy, what’s that? What’s that?’ … This will be the first time that Willow’s actually heard these stories about her grandfather who she knew.”

At the time, the three women talked about a scar on Banfield-Norris’s back which she received when Pinkett Smith’s father threw her over a banister.

“Not to make this like an excuse … but he was typically in an altered state when he was abusive like that,” Banfield-Norris said. “He was typically drunk… “I think women stay because they think that they’re in love. That’s what it was for me. I thought that it was love.”