Jada Pinkett Smith believes in the power of stillness

In trying times, Jada Pinkett Smith has a change of plans.

Switching from Earth Mother to Evil Diva is no big task for actress Jada Pinkett Smith. She’s spent her life learning to entertain. She started when she was just three and played the Wicked Witch in The Wizard Of Oz.

Well she’s back to her nefarious ways as the crafty and seductive Fish Mooney in Gotham, a prequel to DC Comics’ tale of Batman and the colourful villains that darkened his days.

While performing was an assiduous plan on her part – applied with the discipline of a Romanian gymnast – becoming a mother wasn’t.

Married for 18 years to actor Will Smith, she has a son, Jaden, 16, and a daughter, Willow, 13. “First of all, I never imagined I’d be married because marriage was never a thing that I ever really wanted to have,” she says.

“I never thought I’d meet someone worthy of dedicating my life to. Then, at the same time, having a baby on the way. It was like a whole transition. It was mind blowing,” she says, perched on the edge of a grey couch in a coffee bar here.

“Literally all the dreams and aspirations and what I thought my life was going to be, changed. I had to build new dreams and have new aspirations. I look at Will now and I think it was probably good we had no idea what we were taking on.”

Her most difficult time was making that leap, she says. “My life all changed at once. And then having a certain amount of success that came with being married, and all the endeavours that Will and I took on, it was a lot to have at one time – the transition to ‘I’m a wife. I’m no longer single. Oh, God, I’ve got this other being I have to take care of who’s on my hip 24/7. Oh, no. I still have this commitment to this movie. Oh, no. I need to move over here to be with my husband because after I do that, he’s doing this.’

“It was a lot of disruption.” She pauses. “Then you just grow.”

Jada Pinkett Smith with her family – husband Will Smith, son Jayden (left) and daughter Willow.

Adding to those changes was what she calls her “bonus” child, Trey, Will’s 21-year-old son by his first marriage.

“It’s great when you can have a close relationship with a child who doesn’t necessarily see you as an immediate parent, but has trust in you as one,” says Smith, gesturing with her long, lacquered nails.

“Sometimes it’s communication that a bonus parent can have with a bonus child that’s difficult for parents to have with their children, because you really can be a parental friend. There’s a certain kind of relationship that you can have that has a different kind of closeness. So Trey is like my buddy. We have a ritual that we do every day,” she says.

“He’s moved out, but he’s right down the street from us. He comes to the house and he eats, and I make sure that I’m there sitting at the table when he comes, and that’s our time together. We spend, like, two hours a day. He just comes and downloads to me what his night was, what his day has been while he’s eating. And that’s our time.”

Smith, 44, confesses that she practices other rituals that help her through trying times.

“I believe there’s a higher power for sure, no doubt,” she nods. “I know that this is not all me – there’s no way. I do believe there’s a power greater than myself that is surely watching.

“We always keep in mind that for those of us who have that kind of faith and believe there’s a power greater than us, we have that faith, but at the same time, we have to make sure we’re doing our part.

“So that means if there’s a circumstance in my life that I’m having difficulty with, sometimes I go into stillness so that I can hear or feel what needs to be done.”

She says the stillness can be meditation or prayer, or a hike in the mountains.

“Or going out with a girlfriend and talking in a place of solitude and nature. It comes in different ways. When I talk about stillness, it’s just taking time to be more internal than external.” – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

> Gotham premieres tonight at 9pm on Warner TV (HyppTV Ch 613).