The conversation is over for now at Red Table Talk.
Facebook has canceled the online talk show hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith, her mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris, and her daughter Willow Smith, Urban Hollywood 411 confirmed Thursday afternoon.
The decision was handed down as Meta shutters its Facebook Watch division in a cost-cutting measure, according to Variety. Steve Harvey’s talk show Steve on Watch ran on the platform as well and won’t be returning.
Instead of original video programming, Meta is shifting its focus on creating VR experiences in its Meta Horizon Worlds.
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Produced by Westbrook Studios (Jada’s company with Will Smith), Red Table Talk premiered in 2018.
The show’s producers posted a statement on Facebook Thursday saying they are shopping the series.
“We are so grateful to have had such a beautiful partnership with Facebook Watch and we are sorry to see the entire team disband. We wish everyone well in their new journeys to come,” the statement read. “We at Red Table are in talks of finding a new home and we’ll see you soon.”
RTT won a Daytime Emmy Award for outstanding informative talk show in June 2021. The show has also picked up three NAACP Image Awards.
The chat show spawned the spinoff Red Table Talk: The Estefans, hosted by Grammy-winning singer Gloria Estefan, her daughter Emily Estefan, and her niece, Spanish language TV host Lili Estefan.
Red Table Talk has more than 11 million followers on Facebook, and over the years became a pop culture staple.
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In a 2020 episode, Pinkett Smith sat down with Will Smith and confirmed she had a romantic relationship with much-younger singer August Alsina, while she and Will were separated.
“As time went on, I got into a different kind of entanglement with August,” Jada said. “One thing I want to clean up… one of the things that was swirling in the press was about you giving ‘permission’ which is, the only person that can give permission in that particular circumstance is myself.”
The episode was viewed more than 15 million times in the first 24 hours, setting a record for the most views ever on a Facebook Watch original video.
It shattered the previous record of 7.6 million views in the first day held by the Red Table Talk episode with Jordyn Woods discussing the Tristan Thompson cheating scandal.
In a 2021 episode, Paris Jackson discussed coming out to her conservative relatives. “My family is very religious, and a lot of homosexuality is just very taboo, so they don’t like to talk about it. It’s not really accepted,” Jackson said.
That same year, Bobby Brown took a seat at the red table to discuss his son Bobby Brown Jr.’s death from a drug overdose. “He was a young man that tried the wrong stuff, and it took him out of here,” Brown said.
Niecy Nash also got candid on RTT and revealed she’d never been with a woman before meeting wife Jessica Betts. “If I had to label myself in this moment, I would label myself with the term ‘free,’” Nash said.
Other guests on the series included the cast of A Different World, the stars of Girls Trip, actress Hayden Panettiere, former Dancing With the Stars pro Cheryl Burke, iCarly star Jennette McCurdy, as well as Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and Kevin Hart, who discussed growing up with a “bad father,” and wanting to set a better example for his children.
Read the statement below from the producers of Red Table Talk about the show’s cancellation.
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