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Gammy Told No Lies During Her Red Table Talk Interview With Olivia Jade
Olivia Jade sought a redemptive arc but was caught off guard with some tough love
Yesterday, the public was shocked to find out that Olivia Jade Giannulli, daughter of the disgraced actress Lori Loughlin and fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, would be appearing on Jada Pinkett-Smith’s highly addictive show, Red Table Talk. Perhaps shocked is not strong enough a word. Confused might be better. It’s been a year since the scandal broke: Giannulli’s parents paid $500,000 to an organization in order to pass off both Olivia, and her sister Isabella Rose, as crew recruits so that they would gain acceptance into the University of Southern California (USC). Life was different then. Covid-19 was not wreaking havoc on the world, over a quarter of a million Americans were still alive, and millions of Americans still had jobs and health insurance. We had more of a bandwidth to poke fun and laugh at the lifestyles of the rich and famous while also realizing that this controversy pierced the mirage that admissions to any highly selective institution is solely based on merit. But nowadays, we, as a collective, are at our wits’ end with celebrities and their carelessness. Because, regardless of their bubbles, their decisions affect those with whom they’ll never interact, much less see. All of these factors lead me to beg the question as to why Giannulli thought now was the appropriate time for her to set the record straight and why she chose this Black women’s show to do it.
Adrienne Banfield-Norris, Jada Pinkett-Smith’s mother who is affectionately known as “Gammy,” let the audience know upfront that she had the same aforementioned questions. Before Giannulli made her way to the table, Pinkett-Smith, Banfield-Norris, and Willow Smith convened to chat about their feelings, and Banfield-Norris made it known immediately that she was already exhausted: “I found it really ironic that she chose three Black women to reach out to for her redemption story… we don’t get the same from them. It’s bothersome to me on so many levels.” Pinkett-Smith followed up by equating Giannulli’s mistake and her parents’ “protection,” if you will, with her doing the same for her children. But Gammy was unmoved as she should’ve been. Even as Giannulli was repeating…
