Jada Pinkett Smith has been vocal about her thoughts ever since Lifetime’s Surviving R. Kelly aired last week. But now she is using her platform to further the conversation about R. Kelly as well as sexual and domestic abuse within the Black community
Pinkett Smith invited Lisa Van Allen, one of R. Kelly’s abuse survivors that appears in the docuseries, for an emotional heart-to-heart on her Red Table Talk show, alongside her daughter Willow Smith and mother Adrienne Banfield-Jones.
“I have to tell you, I felt a lot of things,” Pinkett Smith said of the docuseries. “I had a lot of feelings about it. One being, I was like ‘Man, wow how complicit we all have been?’ That really broke my heart, like to really think about. We, we ignored it.”
The six-part documentary chronicles decades of R. Kelly’s alleged sexual misconduct and abuse, which he has continuously denied. With more than 50 interviews with Kelly’s victims, it’s hard for many to continue ignoring his widely documented abuse.
Pinkett Smith even said she feels complicit for ignoring the allegations against Kelly, and brought up how she used R. Kelly’s famous track, “I Believe I Can Fly,” for a video of her husband Will Smith bungee jumping.
In their emotional conversation with Van Allen, which led to tears, the Van Allen revealed how her own background as a foster child who ended up in a single-parent household was used by R. Kelly to his advantage.
You can watch the first part of the two-part episode below.
Allen’s daughter, now 16, will be featured on Part 2 of the “Red Table Talk” special airing on Monday.
