Jada Pinkett-Smith continues to be candid about her experience on The Nutty Professor set, 25 years later. On her latest appearance on Red Table Talk, Pinkett-Smith reminisced on one of her earlier roles as Carly Purty, love interest to Eddie Murphy‘s Professor Klump.
The conversation, which also included Tiffany Haddish, daughter Willow Smith, and mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris, started with the ladies discussing their recently-shaved heads. As they continued discussing their own hair journies, Smith recalled the reason why she got her own stylist, remembering how she got into a fight with a hairstylist over her wig.
“This was rough, because the woman who made this wig, she missed the mark,” Jada started when recollecting the wig she wore for The Nutty Professor.
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“She didn’t believe me,” said Smith, elaborating on how the hairstylist refused to take her advice on how her hair should have been straightened.
“She thought the roots should be, not smoothed, but the hair should be straight,” said Smith. “She was like, ‘Well, you know, usually for Black women, you don’t have straightened roots.’ And I said, ‘Oh no, we do. We either straighten it with a hot comb or we perm it.’
“But she didn’t believe me,” Pinkett-Smith continued. “So, she made it with roots that weren’t straight but the hair was… And I fought, and I fought and I fought.”
Despite her pushback on the wig, there was nothing the actress could do. “That was the last time I didn’t have my own hair stylist,” she added.
You can catch the full episode of Red Table Talk below, Jada Pinkett-Smith begins wig talk around the 16-minute mark.