Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith Stage ‘Intervention’ for Son Jaden Amid Drastic Weight Loss

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith staged an intervention for their son Jaden Smith amid his drastic weight loss, the couple revealed on Pinkett Smith’s Facebook Watch series, Red Table Talk. The famous parents said they were concerned for the 21-year-old rapper’s health when he was visibly thinner and developed “dark circles” under his eyes due to his vegan diet.

“Will and I had a bit of an intervention with Jaden because he’s a vegan now, but we realized he wasn’t getting enough protein,” Pinkett Smith, 48, said in Monday’s episode, which also included their daughter Willow Smith, Will Smith‘s son Trey Smith and Pinkett Smith’s mom Adrienne Banfield-Jones.

“He was wasting away,” Pinkett Smith continued about Jaden. “He just looked drained. He was just depleted. He wasn’t getting the nutrients.”

Smith, 50, added that other physical changes aside from weight loss alarmed him and Pinkett Smith. “There was even grayness to his skin,” the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air alum said. “We got really nervous.”

Jaden, who explained that he’s vegetarian and not vegan, revealed that the body changes were a result of him eating just one or two meals a day.

“I also just wanna say that I’m vegetarian. I’ve tried to be vegan,” he said. “I’ll go vegan for a week or so, but for the past year, I’ve been vegetarian.”

“I was just eating, like, two meals a day … maybe one,” he explained. “Maybe just that one big meal, and I’m like, ‘Oh, you know, I didn’t get around to it.’”

But now, the Smith family is happy that Jaden is recovering from his harmful eating habits. “You’re definitely looking better now,” the Aladdin actor told his son.

Red Table Talk frequently evokes heartfelt Smith family discussions that fans might otherwise not be privy to. In May 2018, Willow revealed that she used to cut herself when she was depressed following her 2010 hit “Whip My Hair,” which she released when she was only 9 years old.

“I honestly feel like I lost my sanity at one point,” she said. It was after that whole ‘Whip My Hair’ thing. I had just stopped doing singing lessons. I was kind of just in this gray area of, ‘Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?’”

The singer, who is now 18, continued: “After the tour and the promotion and all of that, they wanted me to finish my album. And I was like, ‘I’m not gonna do that.’ After all of that kind of settled down, I was listening to a lot of dark music. It was just so crazy. I was just plunged into this black hole. I was, like, cutting myself and doing crazy things.”

Willow’s confession surprised her mom, who said she didn’t know about her self-harm until the episode taping. “What? Really? When were you cutting yourself? I didn’t see that part? Cutting yourself where?” Pinkett Smith asked at the time.

Willow then showed her mom her scars on her wrists and arms. “There’s still a little something there. Totally lost my sanity for a moment there,” she said. “I never talk about it because it was such a short, weird point in my life, but you have to pull yourself out of it.”

Photo credit: Kevin Winter / Staff / Getty