In a media environment fueled by the success of “Real Housewives” and Kardashian sister shenanigans, we’re already inundated with an abundance of celebrity gossip. Enter Jada Pinkett Smith.

She’s currently on a press tour for her new memoir, “Worthy,” which releases Oct. 17. Given the 52-year-old's “Red Table Talk” perfected brand, the memoir promises to dig into every hallowed corner of her existence, including her 26-year marriage to Will Smith and their two children together, Jaden and Willow. (Will has a son, Trey, from a previous marriage.)

On Wednesday morning (Oct. 11), a trailer for a TODAY show prime-time interview with Hota Kotb dropped, with Pinkett Smith admitting that she and her husband have been quietly separated for seven years. It was the first thing I saw that morning, and I knew immediately that it would replace the Israel-Hamas conflict as the dominant topic on my social media feeds.

Overall, we've loved Pinkett Smith since her days on “A Different World," and her fans will certainly be intrigued by the personal nature of “Worthy.”  The book promises lots of delicious bits of information from Pinkett Smith's decades-long, multi-hyphenate career. But the bits from the memoir and her accompanying press tour are getting the most attention and, plainly said, it's exhausting.

There’s so much new information dropping every day that I’ve had to rewrite and edit this piece a few times. At this rate, I wonder if people will even need to buy the book and what more is there for her to say that hasn't already been discussed?

The memoir, perhaps calculatedly, comes on the heels of the Smith family burnout that started in March 2022, when Will slapped the ever-loving dogs*** out of Chris Rock at the 94th Academy Awards. We were all either #TeamWill or #TeamChris and the whole affair dominated the news cycle for weeks. The incident even leaked into the April 2022 cancelation of “Red Table Talk.”

Some four months later, after we’d all moved on, Will—tortured by the fact that white people were pissed off at him for the first time in his career—ripped off the Band-Aid and publicly apologized to Rock.  Once again, arguments about the argument began to overtake the conversational buzz on social media.

Just when you thought it was over, March 2023 was like March 2022 all over again when Rock released his Netflix standup routine “Selective Outrage,” addressing the attack at length for the first time publicly. We learned that the routine hurt Will’s feelings and that Pinkett Smith felt that she was an innocent bystander in the whole thing.

“Worthy” promises to further explore the "slap that won’t die," including the fact that Pinkett Smith apparently thought the whole thing was a skit (as we all did). She said she was surprised when Will referred to her as his “wife” since they hadn't been living together in years when yelling at Rock and that Rock shot his shot at Pinkett Smith at some point.

“Red Table Talk” was successful in large part because of Pinkett Smith’s admirable willingness to engage in taboo topics, including her daughter’s polyamorous lifestyle. But the public turned on her during the August Alsina “entanglement” saga when it seemed Will wanted nothing to do with the issue playing out in public.

It wasn’t the only time he'd given that impression.

On one hand, Pinkett Smith has endured lots of unfair animosity. The perception that Will is a delicate flower incapable of making his own decisions under the “spell” of his wife and not a grown-a**, wealthy-a** man who should have better control of his own emotions is steeped in both sexism and stupidity. It also demonstrates that people have selective outrage (haha) toward Pinkett Smith, considering Will has admitted to his own controlling nature in interviews and in his 2021 memoir, “WILL.”

None of us know what exactly is happening behind closed doors in Pinkett Smith and Will’s relationship, but it’s easy to bristle at the knowledge that everything that’s happened between them in recent years has been in the context of them living separate lives. It all feels like she’d be better off sitting down with her family and perhaps a licensed therapist to discuss all the things she’s sharing with podcast hosts. 

Will’s response to “Worthy,” if sincere, suggests that they had, or have, a lot of work to do outside of the public eye.

Pinkett Smith is also catching heat for the glut of information she’s sharing about the late Tupac Shakur. We don’t know how Will feels about his wife’s former relationship with a man who’s been dead for 27 years, but a lot of people placing themselves in Will’s shoes are disturbed by a woman calling a man she’s not married to her “soulmate.”

By Monday morning, Pinkett Smith’s nearly week-long omnipresence on our social media feeds had devolved into jokes about exhaustion. “Worthy” seems to be the brand of memoir that we want from our celebrities, but there’s too much baked-in public animosity toward Pinkett Smith, fair or otherwise, serving as baggage for the book’s release.

Most of us don’t feel good knowing this much about the Smith family, and we simply can’t wait until the damn book drops and we can all move on. Once again.

Though, don’t be at all surprised if Smith Pinkett gets the last laugh and “Worthy” moves big units. The question is, who will play The Smiths in the made-for-TV movie version once the book is optioned for film.

Dustin J. Seibert is an opinion writer and native Detroiter living in Chicago and Miami. He loves his own mama slightly more than he loves music and exercises every day, so his French fry intake doesn’t catch up to him. Find him at wafflecolored.com.