ELKHART, Ind. — Jada Pinkett Smith got emotional during Wednesday's episode of "Red Table Talk" as she spoke with an Indiana mother who shared the devastating story of her 12-year-old daughter's journey with alopecia and the bullying she suffered before taking her own life.
Alopecia is a hair-loss disorder that Pinkett Smith and an estimated 6.8 million others suffer from in the United States. The disorder doesn't discriminate. It affects any age, sex and ethnic group, and the symptoms can vary. In some cases, it can impact a person's sense of identity.
"Three months ago, this story broke our hearts," Pinkett Smith's mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris said on the show.
Rio Allred was diagnosed with alopecia after her family noticed a bald spot in December of 2020.
"With the hair loss, she [Rio] was so strong. She just rocked it, even when it was still falling out and she just had these big bald patches," her mom Nikki Ball said on the show.
They tried creams and painful injections to save her hair but had no luck.
"She said, 'I don't want to do that anymore. Can we just shave my head?' So we did, and she just glowed," Ball said.
Rio's head was shaved right before the beginning of seventh grade. Her grandma bought her a wig that she was thrilled to show off. But when she returned to school, she wasn't met with kindness.
Her mother said she was relentlessly bullied by her classmates and told her mom she didn't want to wear the wig anymore.
"She had it [the wig] ripped off her head. She'd get smacked upside the head walking down the hallway, and that was within the first two weeks."
When she stopped wearing the wig, her mom said the bullying, taunting and namecalling continued— to the point that Ball said they were considering moving her to a different school or homeschooling.
"One of the last things she had told me — she had a really bad day — she had a hat to wear during the winter because some of the classrooms are really cold. She walked into this one class and this one kid was just like, 'Rio, put your hat back on, I can't stand the glare.'"
Then on March 14, 2022, Rio died by suicide.
"No one prepares you to sign a death certificate for your child," Ball said. "Or watching a coroner's van pull up or having to sit your 7-year-old down and tell her that her sister's dead. It was the worst day of my life."
As Ball recounted that day, Pinkett Smith, her daughter Willow and Banfield-Norris got emotional.
"Thank you for sharing," Pinkett Smith said with tears in her eyes. "I just feel like this is really important for children to understand that communication and the amount of pain that's left behind when we do things to ourselves."
Two weeks after Rio's death, Will Smith slapped presenter Chris Rock after he made a joke at Pinkett Smith's expense.
Ball recounted the impact the Oscar incident had.
“What is the universe doing right now? This is crazy,’” Ball recalled thinking. “People are going to be Googling, ‘What is alopecia....What is this that we’ve never heard of?’ It’s not a joke.”
And the moment did bring alopecia to the forefront.
In Wednesday's episode, Pinkett Smith said she chose to use “this moment to give our alopecia family an opportunity to talk about what it’s like to have this condition” and what it is.
In addition to Ball being a guest Wednesday, there was a physician who explained the different types of the disorder.
