Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed she was ‘heartbroken’ on the day that her son Jaden Smith asked to be emancipated. ‘At 15 years old, Jaden, and I remember this day specifically, it’s probably one of the most heartbreaking moments of my life,’ she said. ‘You got to a point where you told me straight up, you were like, “Mom, I have to leave here to live my life”. I remember thinking to myself, as devastated as I was, I was like, “He’s right.” The time is now. He’s 15. It’s time for him to leave the house.’
Jada added: ‘Every child needs something different. ‘Being in this lifestyle, in this world is a bubble and he wanted out. I understood that because I didn’t have the bubble. I knew what having my freedom outside the bubble, what I gained from that. I knew the sooner I let him go, the faster he was going to come back.’
Adrienne admitted that she was confused over Jada’s response to Jaden’s request, saying: ‘I would have never agreed with that.’ But Jada claims that she had always told her husband Will Smith that she knew Jaden would leave early and they would be ‘lucky’ to keep him in the house until the age of 16.
Jaden made the decision in the end not to get emancipated, telling Ellen DeGeneres in 2013 that he decided he won’t go anywhere because the ‘thing that people don’t get is everything at this house is free’. ‘I can get anything and everything at his house, so I’m going to be there for 20, 30 years,’; Jaden joked.