264: How to Get Your Story Right from the Start: Jada Pinkett Smith and the Cost of Inconsistent Storytelling

This was the moment when I went, huh?

But it was a divorce. So from the year 2016, which is seven years ago now.

Yes.

Y' all have been apart.

Yeah. This was the moment when I went.

Hmm, it may not be the divorce on paper anymore. There's no divorce on paper. I mean, not on paper. There might not be a divorce in theory anymore.

Yeah, no. We really have been working hard.

Oh, see, okay. Well, I didn't know. I was trying to. Well, I totally missed that on the whole. That's the whole show. So wait, so wait, just so I'm 100% clear, you were divorced not on paper, but now we might be a point where we're back together.

We are working very hard at bringing our relationship. Yes. Bringing our relationship to.

Back to back.

Back to a place where we are completely confused. Welcome to the Indestructible PR Podcast. I'm your host, Molly McPherson, your crisis communication strategist. Join me as we dig into the latest breaking news and pop culture stories, unraveling the public relations strategies behind them. Let's extract valuable PR lessons so we can all learn how to build an indestructible reputation. Today, we're diving into a topic that has taken over the headlines, at least from an entertainment news perspective. And that is the Jada Pinkett Smith interview on the Today show. Jada Pinkett Smith has been making some waves with some of the revelations in her new memoir worthy. Here to comment is Jada Pinkett Smith. Oh, yeah.

It's so good to see you, Michael.

Thank you. Thank you for coming to the red table.

Sorry if I seem a little tired. I've been on the Today Show 14 times in three days.

And that is the Jada Pinkett Smith interview on the Today show. And that is the Jada Pinkett Smith PrimeTime Special on NBC. And that is the interview on the NBC Today show. Hyping the PrimeTime Special on NBC. I have never seen NBC give such clearance to one actor, at least in. In recent times. All I want to know is what on earth is NBC getting out of this deal? Like, is Will coming on to say something else? Or did some agent or some agency like broker some other celebrity like, holy moly, Jada Pinkett, Smith, the wife of Will Smith, sat down for this interview with Today's show co anchor Hoda Kapi. Now, personally, I like Jada Smith or Jada Pinkett Smith. I like her. I'm going way back to a different world days. I have always, always, always liked her. What I don't like is the recent Jada Pinkett Smith, who is a woman and celebrity who is always standing in truth and always talking about authenticity. Yet what this interview revealed is that she isn't quite as transparent as she should be or that the public expects her to be. So in this podcast, let's talk about the challenges and risks of media appearances when you have to navigate your private life and your public Persona. Now, I know this isn't going to relate to all of you, but it's not just endless celebrities here. This. You could be a politician, you could be a content creator on social media with a following. You could run a business. You could own a business. If you are a face of something, if you say one thing and do another, people could call you out for it. So, same type of thing. But this aspect that we're looking at, it relates to, you know, more personal, something of the more personal nature, which is her marriage to Will Smith, one who I would argue is the more popular of the couple. Now, this podcast inspired by a recent article that I wrote for Forbes. It's published now, and I have the link in the show notes. It's titled Jada Pinkett Smith Interviews. The Cost of Inconsistent Storytelling. That's my angle. I don't want to get into as much about the the culture aspect, though I wish I could based on who I interviewed. There are Honestly, there are 20 stories within a story about this. But the lane that I'm picking and I'm sticking with is, you know, my lane, which is public relations, crisis management. Jada Pinkett, Jada Pinkett Smith sat down for a for an interview with the Today show with Hoda Copy for prime time for her to promote a book. It was a promotional publicity tour for a book. It was all the P's she wanted to promote and pitch. This was all about publicity. However, she landed in a crisis because she got caught. How many was going to call it being deceptive on during this interview? So let's talk about the challenges of media appearances. Now. I'm recording this interview right after I hopped off an interview myself. So I have, you know, a much deeper sense of the importance of this. I spoke with Brittany Luce, so she's the host of It's Been a Minute on npr. I appeared on her program last week and we talked about celebrity and publicity. It was great. It was a great interview. I love speaking with her. But Brittany reached out to me again to speak about the art of the corporate state in light of what's happening with Israel and Hamas. She noted that there were some corporations, sports teams Celebrities who were speaking out and some who were not. And she wanted to get into the, you know, just the navigating of a public statement, particularly when were viewing such atrocities. I was, I don't know, I was kind of hedging a little on going on this program because I haven't made any public statements at all. I haven't done anything, I haven't tweeted anything, I haven't retweeted, I haven't posted, I haven't, I haven't even commented on it. And that's ironic, right? It's very ironic. I should be telling people how to do that. Now I will say I did publicly comment on it from an expert point of view in public relations when I was given a phone call about, about this topic. So this does tie in to Jada's media interview, you know, in the sense that it's, it can be very, very perilous when you are not prepared for the questions or if you're not even prepared to be open about what you're talking about or don't really have a lot of knowledge in it. So a little side story here. So I was contacted two weeks ago now about a story. It was from the Wrap, which is a Hollywood public publication. They wanted to speak to me about studio heads coming out and making comments about the, about what was happening in Israel and Palestine. So at that time, you know, one thing that also that I'd mentioned on this NPR interview was that, you know, what's different about this case, you know, here we have this complex geopolitical issue that is really, you know, at the bottom of, you know, of what's happening here. But you know, people feel the need that they need to, you know, weigh in on a very complex topic. And so in my case, you know, I had to weigh in on myself and I'll admit I was not prepared to do so. So this is the cobbler, you know, without the shoes moment and how I ended up in that situation. I was driving back from Boston, it was at night. One, it was at night and I was in bumper to bumper traffic and I, I get a phone call on my business line and I let it go and then I get another call on my business line. So when people repeatedly call, you think, okay, this is important, this is emergency. But I've learned the lesson. Like Molly, don't answer, don't answer because that's the journalist call. Like I'm going to get you and I'm going to keep calling you to do it. Well, she was likely, I Think it's. She didn't leave a message. The first time. She wanted to leave a message, but I foolishly answered the phone, and it was Sharon Waxman who wanted my. My take because she had said that the Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslav, came out with a statement about what was happening. And he said, the terrorist attack, quote, the terrorist attacks by Hamas on innocent men, women, children, and babies have been unimaginable, abhorrent, and inexcusable. Many have lost their lives, and others have been taken hostage and remain unaccounted for. So. And then other studios started to, you know, jump in, you know, with their quotes while we were, you know, during this interview. And I was telling her, I said, I'm not prepared to talk about this. Like, I'm in a car. I have to get somewhere. Can I call you back, you know, when I get home? And she really, really wanted hers. Wanted that quote, which I get, because she was juggling it. I mean. Cause here she had me on the phone. But she also was trying to get statements from studio heads, right? So she's thinking, I need to speak to Ari Emanuel. You know, he's the head of. He's the one who was portrayed on Entourage. She's not gonna, like, say, oh, sure, Molly, you put me on your schedule. But I insisted. And she kept talking to me. Cause that's what journalists do, right? They want to just keep you talking. But thankfully, her other line beeped in. She goes, okay, I have to call you back. I'm like, whew. I was saved by some studio head representative out there. But just as that happened, I happened to be talking to a journalist friend of mine who came in during that break there. And when he called, I said, oh, such timing, such timing. I said, hey, let me ask you this. If someone were to ask you a question about what your thoughts are on the Israeli Hamas conflict, war, you know, at that time, it was still conflict. You know, what would you say? And so it was good to have that conversation and say it out in the open. And I will give him credit, credit to Greg. He talked about the humanity behind it. You know, that it is fraught with trouble for you, because if you get on the wrong side of the issue, you're going to get not just backlash, you're going to get extreme backlash. And there are definitely celebrities and people out there who are standing on one side. And, you know, in the case of the story, because the head who was talking, they happened to be Jewish, it's reasonable that they would stand in support of Israel. And at that time, because timing comes into these things, the footage that we saw at that time was only these young people getting taken from this concert. So that was the narrative then. So it was. It was different at that moment, but it certainly changed even the other day, you know, the attack, you know, the airstrike on that hospital that killed over 500 people. So with each day in this war, it is more and more difficult and fraught with risk if you take a side. And so she came back on the phone, and I was able to give her quotes with the help. With the help of my journalist friend. So I have to. Actually, I have to give it all to him. I gave him credit for the interview as well. But now back to Jada. Now Jada's talking about her marriage, which we can hardly compare to what's happening with the atrocities over that we're watching. But there is the risk of reputation. I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean, it's important to Jada. I mean, her career is important to her. And if you're sitting down for an interview, it's important to you as well. Okay, so as she was sitting down to promote her memoir, Worthy, she had to talk about something that she talks about a lot, and that is her. Is that about her marriage? And in. In the conversations that she has about her marriage and Will's marriage, it's always about how strong their union is. Even though they have not shied away from, you know, some of the controversies or some of the entanglements that they've had in the past, they have presented a very united front, you know, the two of them, and. And also their family, because both of their kids, Jaden and Willow. Also, I saw this on Twitter. Someone said Willow is named after Will, and Jaden's named after Jada. I have never noticed this. I've never noticed this, and yet it's so obvious. It's so obvious. But their messaging has. Has always really been about family and about strength and resiliency. So some of the recent narratives that we've heard about Jada is how she's shaming Will and embarrassing Will. You know, a few years ago, she got caught up with a friend of her son, August, Alsina, the R and B singer. There was a lot of stories out there about, is she having an affair with this singer? Then she had to shut down all the rumors that she and Will were getting a divorce. And she was saying, you know. And they were saying, you know, intensely, we are not getting a divorce. She's Also on her Red Table Talk, and she's talking about how she stands in truth and authenticity and how she did not cheat on Will. Well, now through this NBC interview, we find out that she did technically, and here's why. So let's listen to clips in the interview. I ran part of them at the beginning of the episode. But you can really distill this entire story or this, this entire PR crisis for Pinkett Smith down to these two sound bites. Let's revisit the first clip from the beginning of the episode. In it, NBC co anchor Hoda Kotb interviews Jada Pinkett Smith in a segment that was pre recorded and aired the Wednesday before her live appearance on on the Today Show. This interview serves as a lead up to a primetime special scheduled for later that evening. Pay attention to the deliberate and intentional language used by Pinkett Smith, which was likely carefully prepared and rehearsed to reset the public narrative surrounding her divorce. Not on paper from Will Smith. Take a listen.

There are so many surprising things in the book, but the thing that surprised me the most that I actually had to reread it because I said, is this true?

Right.

Was that in 2016, you and will decided that you were going to live completely separate lives. It was not a divorce on paper, but it was a divorce. So from the year 2016, which is seven years ago now.

Yes.

Y' all have been apart.

Yeah. Okay. Now you can't see it because it's a podcast, but what Jada did was extend her arms out to show her and Will. It kind of signaled how apart her and Will were. Now listen to the language in the follow up interview from last Monday, a gift after a weekend of harsh backlash. This is the new talking point.

Oh, it may not be the divorce on paper anymore. There's no divorce on paper. I mean, not on paper. There might not be a divorce in theory anymore.

Yeah, no, we really have been working hard.

Oh, see, okay. Well, I didn't know that we might get. The whole show. So wait, so wait, just so I'm 100% clear, you were divorced. Not on paper. But now we might be a point where we're back together.

We are working very hard at bringing our relationship. Yes. Bringing our relationship together.

Back to.

Essentially, she said they were divorced, but just not on paper. Okay. They were just living separate, separate lives. But, you know, which makes sense. You know, people don't get divorced for complicated reasons sometimes. And sometimes not so complicated. Sometimes it just comes down to money. Sometimes it's easier. Frankly, for me, I think it's because they still wanted to leverage each other's popularity, particularly Jada. Now, listen, on the Today show, what is backed into a corner. I mean, she can't be an independent journalist and really grill Jada. How she wants to grill Jada. She can't. It's a part of a promotional blitz. They have to play along. So NBC is giving Jada clearance to clear her name, though I don't think it was warranted because she lied. I mean, she was being deceptive. Now, I know there is a counter argument, but what if it's personal? What if this is our private life? Like, we don't have to share everything. True. Now, Jada and Will have been trying to navigate this dance for a long time. You know, in, in the reason why she could say that she did not cheat on Will with August Alsina was because, well, technically they don't consider themselves married. So she's not cheating on. But they're technically married. So technically she did cheat. That's a lie. That's just a lie. It's deceptive. And when you're deceptive, you are risking the trust of stakeholders. So that's what they've done over and over and over again when they had to come out and talk about their marriage and they had to talk about if they're divorced or not divorced. And then in 2018, like Alsina, like he appears on Red Table Talk, like he's brought into all of this and why do they do that? Red Table Talk? What do they want? They want ratings that. Well, it's on Facebook, so they want eyeballs so Facebook can sell ads. They just want to be, you know, they want to be the couple and get everything that comes with it without having to do all the work. There was even a two part episode of Red Table Talk where Will and Jada sat down and spoke about their marriage. They talked about their fights when they brought everyone in. But again, why are they doing it? They're leveraging it for views. So this is the problem, you know, and then the flip flop again in 2020, she said that she did have a relationship with them during the breakup because they were. She broke up with Smith. So it's going back and forth and back and forth. And then it comes out in 2022 when Will Smith the Academy Awards when he's up for King Richard right after this whole thing happened. I watched it. It's a great movie. A great movie. And if you see the movie, I think Will got up and slapped Chris because he needed to keep his wife's name out of his damn mouth. And, you know, because Chris Rock made a crack about Jada's hair, her shaved head, and the alopecia, and Will came up and slapped him. But then when Will won the Academy Award in his speech. Well, take a listen to his speech. I mean, what do we hear there in that speech? What are we hearing? We're hearing devotion to family. You know, no one is walking away from that acceptance speech thinking, oh, Will and Jada must be divorced and separated at that point. No. And that's the rub that I have with them. So the. The shifting perceptions that are happening now is what caused the public backlash. Now, I don't think Jada and her publicity team plan for any type of blowback or they completely underestimated it because social media, all the platforms filled up with absolute disappointment, disillusionment, snark, dragging. The black Internet, like, lit up. You know about this because they following Will and Jada for years. And I spoke with a colleague of mine, Tamara Sykes. She's a communication digital strategist. She is very wise into black culture. And she and I actually share a client, and we are in that space. So she teaches me so much about it because we work together in the black culture entertainment space. I love working with this client because one, I just love the point of contact with the client. I love the team that we have on. I also love what I learned, that there are two aspects because there's Will and Jada as the A list Hollywood couple, but then there's Will and Jada as Hollywood royalty in black culture, because black culture identifies their celebrities and stars. You have black stars, but then you have the black stars that cross over into the regular realm. And the black stars who are able to do that are held in a different regard, like Jada. So there's an expectation there that they can port themselves in, you know, a more honest way. And again, people can use privacy. I mean, they can use this claim that not everyone needs to know every single thing about us. And no one's going to argue that point ever. I could not agree more on that point. But it's when you leverage that private life for publicity and to enhance your public Persona is where you get into trouble. And that's the problem that I have with Jada did. Tam added another level of this which I found interesting. Now, Tam is a black culture enthusiast. I mean, she knows all of it. One of the shows that she did watch was Red Table Talk. She said that it sets this whole precedent for authenticity, transparency. Jada Talks about standing in your truth. So Tam felt that Jada was drip feeding the truth this whole time, really that both of them were. She also questioned that Jada was not ready for the broader impact of this revelation at all. That's why you have to, Tam was saying, you have to keep your story straight. The fans, particularly in black culture, they would have locked in and truly supported them if they were just honest. But Tam felt that Jada on the Today show thought by just being a little vulnerable and just letting people in a little bit that they were gonna give her a pass, that she could say whatever she want, whatever she wanted about her marriage because that's what the playbook was and that's what they've been always doing. They've been doing from the onset and getting away with it. But there's something different when you're now you're trying to sell a book. So Tam's advice on this, which I think is great advice, she was saying the public is not your safe space. What that means is you can't like rely on your stakeholders affection for you, whether you're a celebrity, a politician or just a content creator. You need a plan for that. You need a crisis plan because there's no silver bullets, she said. But you also need to be honest and transparent because no one is immune to backlash. Tam did point out one thing though, because Jada's doing something right. There is one thing, however, that Tam mentioned that Jada is doing right and that is while she's on her publicity tour drumming up publicity for her book. The job is to make news. And Jada Pinkett Smith, oh, she made news. So now when we have these shifting perceptions in the public backlash, you know, what are you going to do? You know, what are you going to do about it? Okay, so some of the steps that you need to think of when you have to navigate this area, there has to be consistency in if you're doing media appearances or even whatever your messaging is, if it relates to anything between transparency and privacy. You have to strike a balance between being open and being. But explaining why you are being private. Jada Pinkett Smith looked Hoda Kapi in the eye and said she is bringing the marriage back together. I mean, that is a complete distortion to what she said the first time around. It's complete opposite what she said. Now let's just talk about the solution here, the importance of getting it right the first time. Here are three supporting ideas and tips for presenting a narrative that's both honest and respectful privacy. 1. Prepare key messages in advance know what you're willing to disclose and what you plan to keep private. Before any interview or any post, you want to tailor your key messages to stay within a boundary, and it's a boundary that's going to avoid any unintentional revelations. It's a boundary between you and the reporter, and you're allowed those boundaries. Next, you need to be direct, but also discreet. You can offer clarity without divulging sensitive details. So if questions do venture into the private territory and a journalist is asking for those questions, you can politely decline the answer while still providing enough information to meet the reporter's needs. A journalist is there to do a job, to get to the bottom of the story, and they want the truth. In the words of Daniel Caffey, if you can. That's their job to do that. It's not unfair. You know, Hoda, I appreciate the question. I mean, certainly, because Will and I, we live in the public space, and we understand that there's an expectation that we share our private lives in that public space. However, you know, like any family and any couple, marriages can be complicated, but marriages should also be very private in that complication. I wouldn't ask, you know, my best friends to tell everyone and tell me about all the private details of their marriage. And so I certainly would hope that, you know, my fans and your viewers wouldn't expect the same of Will and me, but I will share this, is that I'm deeply committed to Will. I mean, Will and I have made a pact that we are just going to stick together. And even if it's on paper, only our marriage, however our relationship and our commitment is, you can tell I'm roofing right now. I'm not even reading anything. Our commitment is beyond that piece of paper. Our commitment is everlasting. So because I'm doing own it, explain it, promise it. You know, so that's why, I mean, now we're in this place, and this is the narrative that we're going to share. I mean, this is what we want to share with our family. You know, I promise my family to keep certain things private, but I also want to promise, you know, the audience and my fans and the readers of this book that I'm telling them a lot about my life, about my marriage, about what it's just like to be me and how I've struggled feeling worthy throughout times in my. In life. Okay, so that was a public statement that Jada could have. Could have given to Hoda Copy. Now, not to pat myself on the back But I mean, I ripped that off the top of my head and that was perfectly acceptable for that question on the Today show. And I mean, if I can just riff that, anybody can riff that. And you want to know why? Because it's just the truth. Well, it's not my truth. It's Jada's truth or what I think is her truth, but it's the truth. So you want to maintain that consistency no matter where you are speaking and no matter what the whatever the medium or the interview is. So that's the last part of it. You know, last tip. Whether it's multiple interviews or just one follow up, like Jada, you know, on the Today show, you want to maintain a consistent narrative. Tip three, it's maintaining consistency. Whether it's multiple interviews on various platforms or follow up questions from a single outlet, like Jada on the Today show, any changes to your story not only attract further scrutiny, but it also wears down trust. Because if you change your story, that's another way of saying you just lied, you're lying to people. Changing your story is a nice way of saying, but Jada Pinkett Smith, she was deceitful in her messages. Truthfulness is the key here. If there's any learning curve in this approach for revealing more about your personal life without giving too much away, and it could be an immediate appearance, or it could be just social media or could be you as a boss standing up in front of a room with your internal stakeholders, your employees. The challenge with backpedaling, it's just a way of bringing a spotlight onto the fact that you made a mistake. And that mistake was the backpedal is really, you said the wrong thing. You did the so in Jada's case, she's promoting marriage for publicity while simultaneously claiming it's a private matter and that it's no one's business. And the media got it wrong. You know, the press got it wrong. Hoda got it wrong. The public got it wrong. You know, and most people, when they sit down those situations, they don't. They're afforded the opportunity to clarify their comments. I still don't understand why she was given that opportunity. The reputation is left to the public. It's left, you know, online. And that is the bottom line. You know, in order to avoid a crisis, you must be honest. But if your truth changes, you're going to face backlash and you deserve it. Getting your stakeholders to respect your privacy is a matter of establishing and maintaining trust. If they believe in you and that they trust in you, when you tell them what, what they need to know about your private life. They're going to trust that what you keep to yourself needs to be kept to yourself. This Today show interview with Jada Pinkett Smith, you know, this is a lesson in how everyone in the public eye should balance personal disclosures with public perception and without blaming the press if you get it wrong. All right, in every episode I include one indestructible PR tip to help you build an indestructible reputation no matter what the platform is. Whether it's a media interview for television, maybe it's print interview, maybe you're, you're going online somewhere, maybe you're going to be interviewed for a podcast or you're going live or you're doing a post or you're standing up and giving a speech to your constituents. If you think you are smarter than your audience because you never are because you are not in charge of your reputation when you're in a media interview, you can control it, you can weave it, you can try and change it. But if you manipulate it into something that's dishonest or untruthful, it's the public, it's the stakeholders. They have the final say in your reputation. And if you lie and they call you out for it, you had deserved. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. I would love to hear your comments 1 on the article. Check it out. It is in the show notes but you can also find it on Forbes.com site/Molly McPherson and again that the title is Jada Pinkett Smith Interviews the Cost of Inconsistent Storytelling. Check out my social media posts on this topic. Let me know what you think. Also, join me again back on Patreon. I've returned to Patreon because Patreon reached out to me and they told me we've changed something that you wanted and that was the free tier. I loved using Patreon for the PR Confidential membership. It was a place for podcast listeners and people who follow me on social media to go. I do a lot of lives there and we just end up over in that membership and they are a lot of fun. But the last live was a challenge. It's just the platform that I was on. The 5 platform was easy for me to use but wasn't easy for any of my followers to use. They struggled with it. It didn't have a mobile app and I don't like having people struggle on their way to try and reach my content by any means. Now you can join me over on patreon. Look for PR Confidential with Molly McPherson. I would love to see you there. Bye for now.