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Jada Pinkett Smith's 'Red Table Talk' canceled at Meta

Actress Jada Pinkett Smith attends the premiere of "Emancipation" in Los Angeles in November 2022. It was announced this week that her Facebook Watch show "Red Table Talk" has been canceled. File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI
1 of 5 | Actress Jada Pinkett Smith attends the premiere of "Emancipation" in Los Angeles in November 2022. It was announced this week that her Facebook Watch show "Red Table Talk" has been canceled. File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

April 27 (UPI) -- Jada Pinkett Smith's Red Table Talk is looking for a new home. The online show has been canceled by Meta. The Facebook Watch original content group has been shuttered and the executive in charge has left the tech company.

Mina Lefevre was head of the original content group for Meta, which is moving away from expensive original programming. They are instead focused on developing content for virtual reality (VR) viewers through Meta Horizon Worlds.

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Red Table Talk is a production of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's Westbrook Productions and they are said to be shopping the show and its 11 million Facebook viewers to another platform. Red Table Talk featured Pinkett Smith, her mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris and her daughter Willow in an intergenerational talk show format.

The show spun off into one starring Gloria Estefan and her family called Red Table Talk: The Estefans. It would be the last original Facebook Watch show.

Meta is laying off a total of 21,000 staffers. The first wave of 10,000 was announced last year, and these recent layoffs are part of the rest. Facebook Watch was once a mix of unscripted and scripted programming but has since shifted to unscripted.

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In one example of the new approach, veteran comic and TV and radio personality Steve Harvey will join Meta for a version of his canceled NBC daytime talk show. Steve on Watch will air 10 original episodes starting on Jan. 6

Jada Pinkett Smith's career: red carpets, movies and family

Cast member Jada Pinkett Smith arrives with her daughter, Willow Smith, at the premiere of "Wild Wild West" in Los Angeles on June 28, 1999. Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

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