Jada Pinkett Smith, daughter Willow Smith, and mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris’ “The Red Table Talk” is canceled on Facebook Watch, and it is reportedly looking for a new distributor as Meta makes cuts to its operations and staff.
Layoffs at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, have affected the Daytime Emmy Award-winning show “Red Table Talk,” a sit-down interview web series that features three black women of different generations talking about social and cultural issues from their perspective. The hosts happen to be the Pinkett-Smith monarchy.
News of the cancellation comes after Meta’s head of development and programming, Mina Lefevre, left the company along with more than 20,000 employees in the latest round of layoffs.
“Red Table Talk”, produced by Jada and Will Smith’s production company, Westbrook Studios, is just one of many shows that got canned as a result of cuts from Facebook’s original programming as the company is now interested in user-generated content with VR experiences.
Some of the cancellation causalities include Tom Brady’s docuseries “Tom vs. Time,” and Steve Harvey’s talk show, “Steve on Watch.”
Facebook Watch launched as a video-on-demand service on the social media platform on August 10, 2017, with Red Table Talk premiering on Facebook Watch in 2018.
Designed as a platform for episodic TV shows such as Sorry For Your Loss starring Elizabeth Olsen and Limetown starring Jessica Biel, live events and other video content, Facebook was initially only available in the U.S. However, the platform has found success in unscripted programming, with Red Table Talk leading the way.
The show has also won several awards and nominations, including a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Talk Show Host in 2020.
Now, Meta’s entertainment content is betting on Meta Horizon Worlds, a free app for the Meta Quest VR headsets, as a replacement for Facebook Watch.
The metaverse-focused company has launched a series of VR specials, including “The Notorious B.I.G. Sky’s The Limit: A VR Concert Experience,” celebrating the late rapper’s 50th birthday; “The Shaq’tacular Spectacular,” a New Year’s Eve countdown special hosted by Shaquille O’Neal; “Surrounded” and Eli Roth’s “Haunted House: Trick-VR-Treat” starring Vanessa Hudgens, and “Be Mine: A Valentine’s VR Slasher,” a VR horror experience starring Peyton List.
Meta and NBCUniversal, which owns the Peacock streaming app, have partnered to make the streaming service available on a VR headset for the first time.
