Music has allowed Jada Pinkett Smith to show her vulnerable side, she tells Tony Clayton-Lea
The man lurking in the background looks familiar. He is wearing a white T-shirt and a red baseball cap. He is Will Smith. What, you might ask, is the former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air - and a hip-hop singer so commercially aware he makes Kanye West sound like Niggaz With Attitude - doing backstage at a metal festival? The thud and roar of Bullet For My Valentine makes its presence felt so much backstage at Dublin's recent Download festival that the Portakabin vibrates with each pummelling riff. Will Smith isn't getting jiggy with it - this definitely is not his venue - but his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, most assuredly is.
Jada is lead singer with metal/soul band Wicked Wisdom. Wicked Wisdom have just come off stage - they are sweaty, they are full of adrenalin, they are beauty (Jada) and they are beast (the rest of the band), and the blokes graciously allow their lead singer voice duties off stage as well as on. As for Will - for once not in the limelight - he jokingly asks where he can find some Irish hookers. He is given a "isn't-he-cheeky?" look by his wife and a "not-in-front-of-the-journalist" look by the band's publicist. As the only person in the shaky tin box living in Ireland, it seems I am expected to know the answer to Will Smith's questions. I mumble something about knowing nothing about rugby, and receive "say-what?" glances for my trouble.
Will departs none the wiser, and the male members of Wicked Wisdom sit around chewing the fat while most of the questions are directed toward Jada. They don't appear to mind, although it does put an occasional strain on the flow of the conversation, as their presence gives her the excuse to deflect anything she might wish to deflect. And yet aspects of her character peep through: she's sassy enough to put her movie career on ice for a rock band which seems as if it's serious. Would the general perception of her by an outsider, however, be that she's somewhat of dilettante in the area of metal/rock music?
"I don't know, and couldn't care less, to be honest," she says sitting bolt upright, her hair and skin still glistening from the gig. "You just gotta be yourself. People have all types of perceptions, or think they know you by looking at you on the small and big screen. What makes this situation great is that you don't know what is going to happen. One thing I've learned in life so far is that I don't know too much of anything; I just flow along."
Pinkett Smith has indeed been flowing along since her movie feature debut (Menace II Society) in 1993. Following several fluffy roles in forgettable movies (Jason's Lyric, The Nutty Professor, Set It Off), she stepped up her profile and her serviceability in movies such as Ali (where she starred alongside new hubbie Will), a couple of the Matrix flicks, and most notably, director Michael Mann's Ali follow-up, Collateral (alongside Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx). She is also due to appear in a slew of high profile films over the next 12 months.
Clearly no slouch, the mother of two has taken advantage of a current window of opportunity to tour with Wicked Wisdom. To date, the band has opened for Papa Roach, Sevendust and Britney Spears. Frankly, we don't see as much success in the music arena as in the movie industry, but for Jada it's all in the doing. "I love John Coltrane," she purrs. "You've got people that make sonic collages but it's the organic stuff I'm into."
Does her presence in Wicked Wisdom surprise some people? "I'm sure it does, but that's what makes it cool." Would music be her heart and movies her head? "They're both a part of who I am," is her stock response. "They serve a different purpose of the soul - for me, anyway. They each help the entirety of Jada to function better."
The entirety of Jada says that because of her involvement with music she is no longer as cautious as she used to be with regard to the type of movie roles she undertakes. "I've gone through something of a purification process through the music; you're showing the more vulnerable side of yourself. The music has helped me build myself up from there, and that's when you know that being vulnerable isn't too bad. It won't kill you, it only makes you stronger. So now, when I go in front of the camera, there are certain things I can do that I wasn't able to do before, certain vulnerabilities that I'm able to share with the audience."
When you can decipher them through the caterwaul of the music, Wicked Wisdom's lyrics offer more than metal's usual dull and dank nihilism. Pinkett Smith writes them. The unifying thread is, apparently, the human experience. "They're all about how I feel being a chick. They're about absorbing different experiences and having the freedom to express them - be they painful, joyful, moments of disappointment or anger - in a world where we're taught so much to repress. We're supposed to be in control at all times, but this music allows all of us to unleash and release."
And the music - how does that connect? "My theory is that it keeps you linked to some primal nature, particularly in a world that is always trying to define you," she replies, as the thud and the roar of Bullet For My Valentine comes to an end.
The rest of the band are getting fidgety; Pinkett Smith wants to finish. "With bands like Metallica and Guns'N'Roses, I connected to that primal place where I could be not so politically correct all the time, and just let go, to be out of control in an appropriate fashion."
• Wicked Wisdom's self-titled debut album is on release through Suburban Noize records
