On the latest episode of the Facebook Watch show “Red Table Talk,” Jada Pinkett Smith and her co-hosts, Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield-Norris sit down with Niki Ball, the mother of 12-year-old Rio Allred, who suffered from alopecia and took her own life after being bullied.
In an exclusive clip of Wednesday’s show, the heartbroken mother recalls the morning of March 14, when she found her daughter. Niki explained that Rio had shared a room with her other 7-year-old daughter named Avry. She said she thought it was just another normal morning with the girls but “I thought it was weird that the lamp was still on,” she recalled while tearing up. “Then I kind of got this weird [feeling] ‘something is wrong.’ So then I went all the way into her room and she had hung herself with a pair of jeans from her loft bed.” In the second clip, Jada asks the mother how has the family been able to heal following the tragic death of little Rio. Niki said, “I feel like I have to stay strong.” She added that she finds it difficult to talk to Avry about the death of her older sister. “You can’t see that grief monster’s there, but you know they’re there and they’re just gonna come grab you at any second… How do you sit down and tell your 7-year-old; that her sister is gone but by her own hand?”
Jada Pinkett Smith also suffers from alopecia and has open about her struggles. Jada first addressed it back in 2018 on her Facebook Watch show. Speaking about the first time she lost her hair, she said, “It was terrifying when it first started. I was in the shower one day and had just handfuls of hair in my hands and I was just like, ‘Oh my god, am I going bald?'” She explained at the time that she later found a treatment to slow down the hair loss: “I’m getting my little steroid injections, and they seem to be helping, but not curing, but they seem to be helping, but I’m open to other ideas,” she said. More recently, Jada’s condition was unexpectedly mentioned again during the now-infamous 94th Academy Awards, where Will Smith slapped host Chris Rock in the face after he made a joke about Jada’s bald head.
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The wild moment left people divided with many people praising Will for defending his wife but the comedian community turning their backs against him for using violence.
As we previously reported Will publicly apologized and resigned from the Academy. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that Will would be banned from attending any Academy events for 10 years. Neither Jada, Will, nor Chris has given a full interview about the Oscar slap.
Red Table Talk’s new episode on alopecia will stream Wednesday, June 1 at 9 am PT/12 pm ET on Facebook Watch.