Nick Cannon clearly isn’t a fan of accountability laid out on the table.
The host of “The Masked Singer” and father of 12 said Friday morning on his new live radio show, “The Daily Cannon” — which premiered this week on Amp, Amazon’s radio app — that he was glad Jada Pinkett Smith’s “Red Table Talk” was canceled this week.
The Facebook Watch show hosted by three generations of women — Pinkett Smith; her 22-year-old daughter, Willow Smith; and Adrienne Banfield-Norris, Pinkett Smith’s mother — was axed along with all Facebook originals. The show featured panel discussions with high-profle guests about topics as varied as motherhood and systemic racism. Pinkett Smith, a co-producer, has been in talks about moving the show to a different home.
During his show Friday, Cannon had a succinct response to news of the cancellation: “Good,” he said. He blamed the show for Will Smith’s onstage slap of Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars, along with breaking up an illusion that he cherished, that of the idyllic Smith couple.
“If there was no ‘Red Table Talk,’ then he wouldn’t have slapped the s— out of Chris Rock,” Cannon said to the protests of his co-hosts, calling it “that toxic table.”
In 2020, Pinkett Smith and her husband, actor Smith, sat down at the table and talked about their marriage, including Pinkett Smith’s relationship with R&B singer August Alsina while she and Smith were separated. The show’s revelation of Pinkett Smith and Alsina’s “entanglement” blew up online and challenged fans’ perception, fostered by the power couple, that Smith and his wife had a flawless relationship. The episode has been viewed more than 49 million times.
“They made all them memes about my brother Will on that damn table — they didn’t need to do that,” said Cannon said, drawing a connection between the tension that flared during that episode and Smith’s slap of Rock. “I just want to mind my Black own business — I don’t want to be up in everybody else’s kitchen. Keep that s— to y’all selves.”
Co-host and comedian Courtney Bee Bledsoe disagreed with Cannon, reminding him that “Will agreed to to come to the damn table.”
Cannon went on to lament the erosion of his image of the couple. “That was royalty,” he said. “Will and Jada.”
“They are still,” protested co-host Abby De La Rosa, who shares three children with Cannon. She called the table “an honest table” and said the episode with Smith and Pinkett Smith allowed fans to connect more deeply with them.
“It feels human, like, they’re human,” she said. “And it feels relatable ’cause they’re trash too, just like us.”
Cannon himself is no stranger to controversy. Comments he made on his now-defunct “Cannon’s Class” podcast temporarily cost him his “Wild ‘N Out” hosting gig with MTV.
Cannon had called Black people “the true Hebrews” and discussed antisemitic conspiracy theories with former Public Enemy member Professor Griff, real name Richard Griffin, who was kicked out of Public Enemy in 1989 over anti-Jewish remarks.
