“She needs to stop”: Jada Pinkett Smith receives backlash after weeping with the grieving mother of a child with alopecia, who died by suicide

Jada Pinkett Smith has been quite vocal about her ongoing battle with alopecia, a condition that came into the spotlight after the infamous Will Smith-Chris Rock incident at the Oscars.

On the June 1 episode of her talk show Red Table Talk, Jada Pinkett Smith sat down with Niki Ball, the mother of 12-year-old Rio Allred, who died by suicide after being mocked relentlessly for her own alopecia. Netizens didn't take too kindly to this seemingly performative gesture, deeming it as more of a 'subtle' PR stunt to alleviate the damage from the Oscars altercation.

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Jada Pinkett Smith invites a 12-year-old alopecia patient's grieving mother on her talk show

Red Table Talk is a Facebook Watch show that Jada Pinkett Smith co-hosts with her daughter, Willow Smith, and her mother, Adrienne "Gammy" Banfield-Norris.

Wednesday's guest Niki Ball began by recounting the events of that horrific morning of March 14, when she found her daughter. Tearing up, she said:

"I thought it was weird that the lamp was still on. Then I kind of got this weird [feeling like] '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."

She added that Rio used to share that room with her younger sister, Avry. When Jada Pinkett Smith asked Ball about how the family was healing from the tragedy, Ball highlighted that the hardest part was figuring out how to tell her seven-year-old daughter about her sister's loss, that too "by her own hand."

Ball shared that Rio was diagnosed with alopecia areata early during the pandemic when she discovered a bald spot on her head, followed by her hair falling out "by the handful." She explained:

"With the hair loss, she was so strong. She still rocked it even when it was falling out, and she just had these big bald patches. Tried the creams. They made her break out. Tried the injections, she took five of them in one day. But neither of them really did anything."

Jada Pinkett Smith and Willow Smith talking to Niki Ball (Image via Jordan Fisher)

Frustration caused Rio to shave her head instead, and for a while, she "glowed." Her parents bought her a "super cute wig" for the school season, which she soon returned, saying there was no point wearing it anymore. Ball added:

"She had it ripped off her head. She'd get smacked upside on the head walking down the hallway. And that was within the first two weeks, three weeks. It got really bad for her."

Rio was incessantly bullied for her condition, being called names like "naked mole rat," "bug-eyed alien," and "Mr. and Mrs. Clean." Three weeks before she took her life, Rio "had a really bad day" and "just lost it" on the car ride home. It was at this point that her mother knew that the situation was "very serious." Ball claimed that March 14 was "the worst day of [her] life."

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Jada Pinkett Smith faces massive backlash from netizens over the episode

At the end of the episode, Jada Pinkett Smith wept alongside the grieving mother, telling her that Rio's story was a heartbreaking instance that demonstrated why people "need an understanding around the devastation of this condition."

However, the entire episode was viewed in poor taste by several netizens who tore into the actress on Twitter. Many found her to be "manipulative" in this attempt that was perceived as a publicity stunt to position herself in a positive light. Here are a few of their tweets:

Jada Pinkett Smith and her husband Will Smith have both sustained a massive blow to their reputation since the heated Oscars debacle. The former has received even more heat as people online speculated that the couple's relationship was highly toxic.