Jada Pinkett Smith Says She Once Had To Pull A Knife On A Drunk, ‘Aggressive’ Ex-Boyfriend

Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed that she once had to defend herself against an “aggressive” ex-boyfriend by brandishing a kitchen knife.

The 47-year-old actress and mother recounted the nerve-wracking encounter during an episode of her Facebook Watch talk show, “Red Table Talk,” on Monday. Pinkett Smith, along with her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Jones, and her daughter, Willow Smith, were discussing the topic of domestic violence when Pinkett Smith described a tense experience she'd once had with a man who she was dating, “where [she] had to pull a knife out on him.”

That night, Pinkett Smith said, the two were returning home after having dinner together at a restaurant, and he was “drinking and driving.” He then started to get “aggressive” with her, at which point she got out of the car and ran back to their home on her own, she recalled.

“I ran to the house. I had to take my clothes off, take off my heels,” she said, adding that she slipped into more comfortable clothing. “I remember jumping in that sweatsuit, grabbing a big ol’ knife from the kitchen and hiding in his son’s room. I’ll never forget — he came through the back sliding door, like, on the creepy creep creep like he was going to sneak up on me or something like that.”

“I heard him. I came out of his son’s bedroom and I was at the bottom of the hallway and I was like, ‘Don’t come near me,’” she said. “He said the quintessential line you hear in movies all the time. ‘You think I would hurt you? I would never do that to you.’”

That’s when Pinkett Smith said that she knew she was in trouble.

While she didn’t expand on how that particular incident came to an end, she did say that it was director Spike Lee who provided her with a way out of the relationship by offering her a part in the “Girl 6” film.

“Spike had been calling me about ‘Girl 6,’” she said. “I used Spike as an excuse to get on that plane and [her ex] said right then and there, ‘I’ll never see you again, will I?’”

“I got on that plane and he never saw me again — until I was with Will Smith,” she said.

Banfield-Jones also discussed the abuse she suffered at the hands of Pinkett Smith’s late father, who, she explained, was “typically in an altered state when he was abusive.”

On one notable occasion, Pinkett Smith’s father, who had been drinking at the time, threw Banfield-Jones “over a bannister,” injuring her enough to leave a scar on her back.

She said she sought help by going to a neighbor, who then called the police.

The violent incident marked the end of their relationship, according to Banfield-Jones.

[Photo: Getty Images]