Jada Pinkett Smith Lands Big Netflix Movie Role

Jada Pinkett Smith has lined up her next big movie role, and she’s getting in on the streaming game. Deadline reports that Smith signed on to Redd Zone, a new Netflix drama written by Matthew A. Cherry and Kristin Layne Tucker. According to the official description, “Redd Zone follows Tia Magee (Smith), a single mother who steps forward to help her sons and their high school football teammates, ‘The Bros,’ heal after the murder of their best friend, Dominic Redd. One by one, The Bros start moving into her house, and soon 17 are living under her roof. Eventually, all The Bros go to college, with four making it to the NFL.”

Smith took to Instagram to share her excitement about the new project, writing “I’m really excited about this one [three heart emojis].” Cherry, on top of being a writer and the creator of the Academy Award-winning Animated Short Hair Love, is a former NFL player, so this is a particularly meaningful project for him.

Smith was last seen in The Matrix Resurrections, reprising the role of Niobe. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Smith explained that she was excited to return to the role after all these years. “I love The Matrix and I love the story and I love what it offers to the world, but sometimes you show up for people to be part of the journey,” Smith explained. “For Lana, I wanted to show up in that way.”

As she enters into this new project with Netflix, hopefully, she has a similar experience as her contemporary, Sandra Bullock, who recently sang the praises for the streaming giant. “They’re good to artists. They’re good to filmmakers,” Bullock said. “If it wasn’t for Netflix, a lot of people wouldn’t be working. Their stories wouldn’t be told. Who would think that me as a woman, would still be working at this point? I would have been out in the cow pasture. It’s true.”

Bullock also explained that Netflix took chances that other production houses wouldn’t, like with the massive hit Squid Game. “That’s one of the bigger ones, but I’ve seen more work from other countries told by other nationalities, and we never would have had that 10 years ago, ever,” Bullock said. “It brings people together in a way that really, you know, we’re getting more and more divided and yet, we have the streamers that are able to blend our stories together and go, look, same story, just different.”