What to Know
Jaden Smith was raised by two of the most famous entertainers in the business (Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith, of course). But despite growing up watching those two do their thing his entire childhood, Jaden still exhibited some worrying behavior at a recent event when he walked away from a reporter — not just mid-interview, but also mid-question.
Jaden was talking to a journalist from Complex at the time.
This week, Complex shared a video of a red carpet interview with Jaden on their official social media. At the time, the 27-year-old was at a screening for Coulda Been Love season 2 while talking to journalist Jillian Hardeman-Webb, who asked him about his future fashion plans — and whether or not they might involve Kanye West.
“I see that you’re working with Steven Smith, who designed Yeezy footwear with Ye. What are y’all cooking up?” Jillian asked.
She could barely finish getting the words out before Jaden was walking away from her in the other direction with no explanation. After she turned to watch him go, she looked back at the camera and said, “I guess we’ll never find out.”
He and Ye have an interesting past.
As Entertainment Weekly pointed out, it seemed like Jaden looked up to Ye a lot in his younger years, and was even in attendance at the rapper’s wedding to Kim Kardashian in 2013. But just a few years later, something changed between them, which Jaden suspected could be tied to his music not charting the way it once did.
The final straw for Jaden seemed to come in 2022 when he walked out of an event at Paris Fashion Week after Ye arrived wearing a shirt that read “white lives matter.”
“I can’t stand behind what Kanye’s saying. He does not have the full support of the youth,” Jaden wrote in a post on X, which has since been deleted.
Maybe Jaden just didn’t feel like talking about Ye at the time?
People are unimpressed with Jaden’s interview behavior.
Regardless of what his reason for walking away might be, many people in the comments of Complex’s Facebook post called him out for being rude and unprofessional.
“Crazy how money and materialistic things give you a feeling of power, as if you’re better than everyone. Cornball,” one person wrote.
But others came to his defense, with one writing, “He’s frequently said he’d rather discuss real, current issues than the fake, media pushed agenda. She knew the Kanye question was out of pocket.”
