Tragic Details About Willow Smith

This feature discusses mental health issues and self-harm.

Willow Smith's ode to tossing tresses took flight on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2010, but the "Whip My Hair" singer didn't need a hit song to make a name for herself. As the child of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, fame was her birthright — and it came with some serious downsides. "Growing up and trying to figure out your life ... while people feel like they have some sort of entitlement to know what's going on, is absolutely, excruciatingly terrible," Willow told Girl Gaze (via ET) in 2017.

At a young age, fame also forced Willow to make a decision that would have ramifications on every aspect of her life, from her career to her relationships: whether to hide from the spotlight or embrace it. She chose the latter, becoming an introspective artist who makes genre-jumping seem effortless. For the "Meet Me at Our Spot" singer, this pathway was the option that provided her with the best opportunity to make a positive impact on the world. She succinctly described her thoughts on fame to Rolling Stone UK as thus: "I don't really like headlines, but I do like messages."

Willow wants the messages in her music to resonate with her fans in a rewarding way, saying, "I'm just always trying to make people happy and find themselves." But while she told Glamour UK that she's an optimist who tries not to let others' negativity halt her pursuit of happiness, she's not immune from hardships and pain.

Willow Smith didn't listen to "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" and "Wild Wild West" and decide that she wanted to be a performer. As a child, it wasn't her dad's peppy hip-hop hits but her mom's darker, guttural nu metal songs that spoke to her soul. "Bleed All Over Me" was one of young Willow's early favorites. "I would sing it over and over," she told W magazine.

Starting at the age of 4, Willow was allowed to watch Jada Pinkett Smith's band, Wicked Wisdom, perform for crowds that were sometimes hostile. In an interview with L'Officiel, Willow recalled witnessing the aggressive behavior of racist metal gatekeepers, including those who threw bottles at her mom. "There were a lot of racist and sexist people that she had to deal with who were very vocal about the fact that they were racist and sexist," Willow told Billboard. "I got to see people get very rowdy and say some things that you should never hear somebody say to your own mother."

When Willow decided to start recording rock music herself, she told Glamour UK that there was some pushback from label executives solely because she was Black. She's also received hate on social media from rock fans who evidently don't believe she belongs. Speaking to The Face, she said of their resentment and spite, ​"I try not to look too deep into it because I don't want to get attached to those negative emotions."

"Whip My Hair" was released just one day before Willow Smith's 10th birthday, and soon, she found herself touring with Justin Bieber. But while she followed up the infectious earworm with the less successful singles "21st Century Girl" and "Fireball," a debut album featuring her debut song never materialized.

For Smith, becoming an overnight sensation at such a young age was a massive burden. She told The Face that it put immense pressure on her to keep her nose to the grindstone, to her own detriment. "When you have to work and a lot of people's incomes are on the line if you don't perform well, that's not conducive with childhood," she said. On top of having so much riding on her continued success, she found herself in a dark place and soon realized that she badly needed to press pause on her music career. "I feel like if I hadn't, there might have been some earlier tragedies," she said on SiriusXM's "Bevelations." When host Bevy Smith asked her how she knew that taking a break was worth passing up opportunities beyond other singers' wildest dreams, Smith said, "I had touched a sadness that I didn't know existed, and that was terrifying."

She told NME that she even tried giving up singing for good. "I didn't make music for a whole year, which is insane for me," she said. However, she discovered that she loved it too much to leave it.

When the topic of forgiveness came up on "Red Table Talk" in 2018, Willow Smith had an honest conversation with her parents regarding the way they behaved after they saw that "Whip My Hair" could be a launching pad for a long and fruitful hip-hop music career. "I definitely had to forgive you and Daddy for that whole 'Whip My Hair' thing. It was mostly Daddy because he was so harsh at certain times," she told Jada Pinkett Smith. Willow revealed that she didn't feel like her parents were listening to her concerns. On top of that, she felt guilt because she realized that they were, at least, trying to help her in some way.

But according to Will Smith, it took an extreme act of rebellion to make him realize that he was in the wrong for ignoring his young daughter's complaints about the adult stresses she was suddenly expected to endure. Shaving her head at age 11 was very much intended to send everyone a message about how she felt about her success. "I can't be the 'Whip My Hair' girl if I don't have any hair," Willow told Spin. When her dad saw her bald head, it made him rethink the way he was parenting his daughter. "I'm like, 'Got it. I got it, baby. I'm sorry. I apologize,'" he recalled during his "Will Smith: An Evening of Stories with Friends" event (via People).

On "Red Table Talk," Willow Smith said that Jaden Smith got a lot more coddling from Jada Pinkett Smith than she ever did. She recalled how her mom would yell at her to get her out of bed while speaking softly to Jaden and allowing him to get a few extra ZZZs. "I knew that she's gonna have it twice as hard," Jada explained. "I needed you to be strong because I know what this world is like for us as Black women." 

But Jada's fear of the world hurting Willow caused her to hurt her own daughter. According to Willow, Jada was so determined to toughen her up that she pushed her child away when she was in desperate need of the emotional support of a loving parent. "If I would be crying or have an upset, the energy was always like, 'Take that somewhere else and deal with it on your own,'" Willow said during another episode of "Red Table Talk."

How Jada reacted to her tears was clearly something that affected Willow deeply because the topic came up again on "Red Table Talk" the following year. "You pushing me away for crying was like, I'm a bad person for crying," she said to Jada, who confessed to using shame to parent her daugther. Willow told her mom that she was forgiven.

In 2014, Willow Smith and Jaden Smith gave T Magazine readers some insight into just how different their lives were from your typical teen. Their revelations inspired the creation of many listicles of their wildest remarks, such as Willow's summation of her brief public school adventure. "It was the worst experience because I was depressed," she said. Willow also touched on her passion for quantum physics and stated that her music is inspired in part by "the feeling of being like, this is a fragment of a holographic reality that a higher consciousness made."

On "Red Table Talk," Willow recalled Jada Pinkett Smith being mom-shamed for homeschooling her children. She also said that she felt like the Black community treated her and her brother like outsiders because of the way they were raised. "I felt like me and Jaden were shunned a little bit," she said. "Even some of our family members, I would feel they thought, 'You're too different.'" The dissemination of stories about Willow's unconventional upbringing and her existential musings led to her having some uncomfortable conversations with strangers as a child. "It was always like, 'Oh, it's not your fault, your mother should have taught you better. It's not your fault that you're crazy,'" she said.

In 2017, Willow told Vulture that she also found it hard to relate to people her age. "Even the language that kids nowadays use, I'm just not used to it," she said.

Willow Smith's struggles with anxiety began when "Whip My Hair" whipped all the adults around her into a frenzy. Apparently, their expectation was that she would promote the track with no pushback, and when she dared to speak out about any discomfort she was experiencing, her feelings were disregarded. Willow was booked to perform on "The Tonight Show" during those tumultuous tween years, and she experienced an anxiety attack when it was go time. "Everyone around me was like, 'You're just a brat. Why aren't you grateful?' They didn't see it as an anxiety attack, they saw it as a tantrum," she recalled on "The Yungblud Podcast."

Willow herself wouldn't realize that she'd suffered an anxiety attack until she was older. At the time, her mother was also unaware that Willow was struggling with a serious mental health issue. On "Red Table Talk," Willow suggested that Jada Pinkett Smith had experienced so many hardships in her life that anxiety seemed like a trivial concern to her. "That was very frustrating for me as a child, because I was like, 'How can you not see my internal, emotional struggle?'" she said. Her anxiety got so bad ahead of one modeling job that she started uncontrollably vomiting.

In another episode of "Red Table Talk," she said of her anxiety attacks, "There's shame. There's guilt. There's sadness. There's confusion. And then you don't even want to talk about it because you're like, 'I feel crazy.'"

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

When Will Smith appeared on "Red Table Talk" in 2018, he and Jada Pinkett Smith opened up about their marital issues. Will recalled an explosive argument that he and Jada had over the 40th birthday party he had planned for her, saying that he did not react well when Jada let him know that she felt like Will had used the occasion to stroke his own ego. "I snapped in front of Willow. It was the only time in her childhood she ever saw me snap," Will recalled. This upset Willow, and Will apologized to her as the waterworks started flowing. "She's like [shouting], 'Just figure it out! You guys please just figure it out! Just figure it out!'" he continued.

In a 2019 interview with People (via Hollywood Life), Willow revealed what was going through her mind during her parents' lowest point in their marriage. "I was like, 'I'd rather them divorce than keep being unhappy in the same house,'" she said. The couple did separate for a time but ultimately decided that their marriage was worth saving.

And while Willow told the Independent that her parents just don't understand her sometimes because they weren't thrust into the spotlight from birth, she does understand them and doesn't mind hearing about their relationship woes. "From a very young age it was clear to me they weren't just my parents," she said. "They're full, other people who have their own emotions."

On "The Yungblud Podcast," Willow Smith spoke about some of the negative emotions she grappled with early in her music career. "For so long, I had a lot of fear that was just in my heart," she said. "I felt extremely unsafe." Unfortunately, her decision to take a break from performing and recording music didn't prove to be a salve that made everything better. "I was kind of just in this gray area of, 'Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?'" she recalled on "Red Table Talk."

After she made the decision to forgo recording a hip-hop album, Willow found herself uncertain of what to do next. "I was just listening to a lot of dark music. It was just so crazy and I was plunged into this black hole, and I was cutting myself," she said. "I was experiencing so much emotional pain." This revelation stunned her mother. "Willow, I had no idea. I never saw any signs of that," Jada Pinkett Smith said, expressing relief that her daughter had stopped. In an interview with People, Willow said that she managed to pull herself out of that dark place by reaching the realization that harming herself wasn't helping matters. What did help was looking inward and embracing what she saw. "It seemed literally psychotic after a certain point because I had learned to see myself as worthy," she said.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

In a 2015 episode of "The Howard Stern Show," Jada Pinkett Smith took a trip down memory lane, recalling how she and Tupac became friends in high school. She also revealed that she and the "Changes" hitmaker weren't on speaking terms at the time of his death in 1996 because they'd had an argument. "It definitely taught me a lesson, which is life is too short," she said. "Do not let disagreements stand in between you and people that you love."

Willow has long wished her mother and Tupac were able to make amends, and she apparently began absorbing some of Jada's sorrow over his death. When she was 11 years old, she shared a photo of a letter that she wrote to the deceased rapper on her Instagram page. In the since-deleted post, she revealed that she had penned it years prior (via BET). "Dear Tupac, I know you are alive someplace. I think that my mommy really misses you. Can you please come back so mommy and me can be happy! I wish you were here ... I really do! Love, Willow," it read.

If it wasn't obvious enough that the ghost of Pac haunted her family's home, in a 2010 appearance on "The Madd Hatta Morning Show," Willow revealed that she'd heard enough of his music to be able to list him as one of her favorite performers. "My mom is his best friend," she explained.

When 13-year-old Willow Smith was photographed laying on the same bed as 20-year-old actor Moisés Arias, some outlets decided to play the shame game with Willow. "Whoa! Is Willow Smith into older men?" Hollywood Life wrote — before proceeding to note that Arias was good friends with Willow's brother and that there was zero physical contact between Arias and Willow in the innocuous image. And when the Smiths were investigated by the Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services, social workers were apparently more concerned about Willow's diet than any potentially inappropriate relationship.

On "Red Table Talk," Jada Pinkett Smith revealed that someone had contacted the department and accused her and Will Smith of starving their daughter. When it was time for her interview with a social worker, Willow came up with a way to prove that what was arguably an extreme form of body-shaming was complete hogwash. "I walked in with a bowl of cereal," Willow said. "I was like, 'You know what? I'm going to walk in with food, and I'm gonna eat the entire time!'" According to Willow, what bothered her most about being interviewed was what a waste of resources it was. "I was looking at the lady and the whole time I was thinking, 'You could be helping so many kids right now, and you're wasting your time with a child who has everything that they need,'" she recalled.

Willow Smith has found musical muses in concepts such as self-acceptance and fringe beliefs like those of the "light eaters," or breatharians (people who claim it's possible to subsist mostly on air and sunlight). But for her 2022 album "Coping Mechanism," she decided to explore territory that was foreign to her and pull a Taylor Swift by gleaning inspiration from heartbreak. Of why she'd avoided the topic before, she told NME, "I just felt like everyone talks about that, and it's just boring. But then your girl got her heart broken."

Smith told Spin that the romantic partner who broke her heart was female but tried to keep the interview steered toward the breakup and its aftermath, not the identity of her ex. She admitted that she could have handled her relationship difficulties better, saying, "The biggest problem that I came up against was trying to take the high road and be the mature one. It gets you into a place where you're actually not being honest." 

Smith also opened up to Kerrang about going through that terrible post-split period during which thoughts about an ex and what went wrong keep the tears flowing. "Some days I would just cry on the couch," she said. And while explicating her title track's lyrics, Willow stated, "I feel like it just encapsulates this feeling of something being broken and you don't know how to fix it." Hence the need for a coping mechanism.

In addition to being a target of trolls due to her celebrity status, Willow Smith has been confronted with discrimination. Speaking to Spin, she revealed that one of her most memorable experiences being judged based on her appearance came when an employee at a high-end clothing store didn't realize who she was. "I was like, 'Oh, I have an account here,'" Smith recalled saying, to which the employee replied, "You must be mistaken." But Smith didn't need the employee to type her name into a computer to validate her claim; she was an ambassador for the store's brand, and her picture was on the wall. "Obviously, I didn't get what I was going to get because I felt so humiliated. It wasn't a good feeling," Smith said.

She's also been on the receiving end of racist remarks intended to be compliments. "I've ran into situations with white men specifically who are like, 'Black girls don't usually look like you,' or, 'Whoa, your hair is lying down. That's crazy, you actually look pretty!'" she told Billboard.

When Smith became a Chanel ambassador, her aim was to inspire other Black women and girls to not let people like that employee make them feel like they don't belong. Nor should they allow white men to decide what is beautiful. "I know a lot of girls that look like me feel that they're not beautiful," she told The Telegraph. "I want them to know that's not true." 

Willow Smith's fans know that she's a sensitive soul, and she's not afraid to let others see her cry. During a 2021 Instagram Live, she got emotional while sharing her pain with her followers and offering them some words of encouragement. "Just make some tender space for the aching hearts, 'cause know my heart is definitely aching," she said. "So, I love you, and I hope that this little message made some of you feel seen." She explained that she had awoken with pain in her heart and decided to record a video because it dawned on her that there had to be so many others out there experiencing the same pain.

The singer also sparked concern among her fans in 2023 when she shared an extreme closeup of a tear trickling down her face. She left her Instagram followers mystified as to why she posted the image because she only included a single word in the caption: "pantomime." One fan's comment read, "It's heartbreaking to see anyone like this. Please reach out to someone, anyone if you need to vent."

But the singer has learned to embrace pain as part of the human experience, so her tears weren't necessarily a cause for concern. "I can't stay up in that ethereal, celestial, high-vibration good-vibes place all the time," she told The Guardian. "Negative emotions can be cathartic. We don't always have the answers, and that's OK."