teens

Jaden Smith was “wasting away”. So his parents Will and Jada staged an intervention.

 

Jada Pinkett Smith and husband Will Smith have revealed that they had to stage an intervention for their son Jaden because he was “wasting away”.

The revelation came when movie star dad Will called an “emergency red table” for the family, filmed for Jada’s Facebook Watch show Red Table Talk.

The family were all talking about their diets, and rapper Jaden was saying his big problem was that he woke up in the morning with his stomach hurting, and he didn’t want to eat breakfast.

Jaden Smith talks about his relationship with food in the latest Red Table Talk. Post continues below.

Video by Red Table Talk

Jada and Will then talked about how concerned they’d been for their son.

“Will and I had a bit of an intervention with Jaden because he’s a vegan now but we realised he wasn’t getting enough protein,” Jada said. “So he was wasting away. He just looked drained. He was just depleted. He wasn’t getting the nutrients.”

“He had dark circles under his eyes,” Will added. “There was even a little greyness to his skin. We got really nervous. But you’re definitely looking better now.”

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Jaden clarified that he had actually been vegetarian for the past year, after having tried to be vegan. But he hadn’t been eating much when his parents were concerned for him – perhaps just one or two meals a day.

“Maybe just that one big meal, and I’m like, ‘Oh, you know, I didn’t get around to it.’”

Later in the show, Jaden said that he’d been very stressed before his performance at the Coachella music festival in April this year.

“I wasn’t looking good, I wasn’t feeling good, I wasn’t sleeping.”

 

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He also said he was unwell on his trip to Australia.

“I was in so much pain in my stomach in the emergency room,” he remembered.

His sister Willow explained how much that had scared her.

“I was about to hop on the plane to Australia,” she added.

Jaden wasn’t the only member of his family to talk about his eating issues at the emergency red table. In fact, Jada said the whole family had “issues with food”.

She said she would “rather not eat”, because it felt uncomfortable, due to her sensitive stomach, so she ended up eating the same thing every day.

“You don’t eat nothing,” pointed out her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Jones.

Singer Willow talked about how bad she’d felt when she was “working out like crazy”.

“My stomach never felt good, I was always lethargic, I had gas all the time… I was eating just for my physical appearance, but I was feeling terrible.”

As for Will, he was the one who kicked off the whole discussion by talking about how he’d put on a lot of weight while on a family holiday on a boat last month. He’d been eating four or five freshly baked muffins for breakfast every morning, and drinking Moscow mule cocktails for lunch.

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Trey Smith
The entire Smith family confronted their relationship with food. Image: Getty.

Jada and Willow had come up with a nickname for him.

“They started calling me ‘Pudgemuffin’,” he remembers.

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“I got up to 225 pounds [102kg] and it was the most I ever weighed in my adult life. I got to 223 [101kg] on Ali and I got to 225 on the muffin boat.”

Will said he didn’t like being that heavy, so he came home and decided to fast for 10 days. But after four days his blood pressure was “almost dangerously low”. It was at that point that he realised that he didn’t actually know anything about food.

“I know how to eat to make my body look muscular but I actually don’t know how to eat to feel good, I don’t know how to eat to be healthy.”

The Spill hosts, Kee Reece and Laura Brodnik debrief on Jada Pinket Smith and Will Smith's most recent Red Table Talk.

Will went on to reveal even more of his intimate health details, including that he can go three days without pooping, he has an “old man bladder”, and he’s noticing “a little bit of shake” when he puts the golf ball on the tee.

The whole family – including Will’s older son Trey – are now on what Jada calls “the Smith family health and food intervention journey”, and are encouraging the public to join in.

For help and support for eating disorders, contact the Butterfly Foundation‘s National Support line and online service on 1800 ED HOPE (1800 33 4673) or email atsupport@thebutterflyfoundation.org.au. You can also visit their website, here