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As Facebook Owner Meta Cuts Costs, Red Table Talk Gets Canceled

As Facebook Owner Meta Cuts Costs, Red Table Talk Gets Canceled

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(Left to Right) Jada Pinkett Smith, daughter, Willow Smith, and mother, Adrienne “Gammy” Banfield-Norris (Photo: Red Table Talk, Facebook Watch)

Actress Jada Pinkett Smith‘s popular Facebook Watch series “Red Table Talk” has been canceled along with all of the platform’s original streaming content.

As Facebook’s parent company, Meta, looks for ways to cut costs, Smith’s talk fest was on the chopping block. The intergenerational show features Smith, her daughter, Willow Smith, and her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, as well as special guests. The provocative show has created a buzz since it launched in 2018. It’s covered such topics as Smith’s own extramarital affair with younger singer August Alsina while married to Will Smith, mental health, sexuality, polyamory, domestic violence, and addiction, among other subjects.

The show’s production company Westbrook Studios, founded by Pinkett Smith and her husband Will Smith, is reportedly shopping for a new distributor for the Daytime Emmy-winning talk show, Variety reports. Westbook also produced a spin-off, “Red Table Talk: The Estefans” with Gloria Estefan, her daughter, Emily, and her niece, Lili.

Meta is slashing 10,000 jobs across the company, even though it laid off 11,000 staffers at the end of 2022.

Facebook Watch’s originals began as a mix of scripted and unscripted shows, but the company changed to entirely to unscripted content. Among the shows it offered were “Red Table Talk” and Steve Harvey’s talk show “Steve on Watch.”

Pinkett Smith’s show seemed to resonate with viewers. It has 11 million followers on Facebook and inspired an active Facebook discussion group with 600,000 members, The New York Post reported.

(Left to Right) Jada Pinkett Smith, daughter, Willow Smith, and mother, Adrienne “Gammy” Banfield-Norris (Photo: Red Table Talk, Facebook Watch)