Jada Pinkett Smith Recalls the 1 Moment Her Brother, Caleeb Pinkett, Became a Man To Her, ‘He Had To Go Identify the Body’

Will Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, are well-known celebrities. However, you might not know that Jada has a half-brother, Caleeb Pinkett, a Hollywood actor and producer. In one Red Table Talk, Jada revealed the terrifying moment that her younger brother became a man to her. 

Jada Pinkett Smith and Caleeb Pinkett share the same father and the same pain

Will Smith’s wife, Jada, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1971, to Adrienne Norris-Banfield and Robsol Pinkett, Jr. Her parents were married but divorced only a few months later. Nine years later, Robsol had another child, Caleeb, in Orange County, California. He left the boy’s mother when Caleeb was two years old.

In a Facebook Watch Red Table Talk, the siblings opened up about sharing the same “sense of pain” about their father. 

“Our father, Robsol Pinkett, Jr., struggled with drugs and alcohol his entire life,” Jada explained in the talk show. “He was not a part of our childhood, and we were forced to grow up without him. When Rob died of an overdose, we were left having to reconcile our feelings and find forgiveness on our own.”

Throughout the episode, the siblings discuss the story of their father. He was sober for about 20 to 25 years, but then “he fell off the wagon.” Jada reluctantly agreed to bring her father out to California to help him get clean again. However, after three years sober, he relapsed again and died from an overdose. 

“We both had a lot of resentment,” Jada recalls. “We had that feeling that we had to be responsible for him, but he never had to be responsible for us. That was a hard pill for me to swallow.”

Jada will never forget the moment her brother, Caleeb, became a man in her eyes

Before Robsol died, Jada had a “horrendous fight” with him about his relapse, that she still regrets. However, the other moment that sticks out in her mind about her father’s death is how it made her feel about her brother.

“What I will say about that moment for me is that’s when my brother became a man for me,” Jada said. “He had to go identify the body. [Caleeb] had to take care of the funeral arrangements. He did it all.”

Jada was thankful that she did not have to take care of anything. Her younger brother stepped up and did it with “strength and grace.”

“He grew up to me in that moment,” Jada remembers. “To have my little brother be able to step up for me was an amazing moment.”

The Pinkett Siblings recall how they came to forgive their father

Jada’s father died in 2010, but it took her many years to reach her “aha moment” of forgiveness for him.

“Rob’s life wasn’t about him being my father,” Jada realized. “Rob’s life was about Rob being on his journey. It just so happened along the way he gave me life. In that moment, I realized he was not born to be my dad. That wasn’t the only thing he was here to do. He’s a person first with his own journey.”

She called her brother immediately to tell him this, and Caleeb agreed. 

“Caleeb, it didn’t have anything to do with us,” Jada told him. 

The siblings realized they had to stop placing labels and expectations on other people in their lives.