Jemele Hill and Her Mother Speak Candidly About Family’s History of Pain on ‘Red Table Talk’

Journalist Jemele Hill returned to Facebook Watch’s Red Table Talk and brought her mom along as they spoke openly about their family history of pain in an episode titled “I Saw My Mother Falling Apart.”

It was Jemele and her mother’s first interview together and things got emotional as the sports journalist and her mother, Denise, revealed the pain passed down in their family after Denise was abused, raped, and relied on drugs to cope with severe PTSD.

In a raw emotional conversation, Jada and Gammy open up about their own traumas and how the adversity Jada and Jemele experienced throughout their childhoods shaped the incredible women they’ve become today.

A clip shows Hill’s detailed response when Willow Smith asked how she noticed her mom was “slipping away” during her rough childhood.

“My mother got divorced. We were evicted from our home in Detroit,” Hill recalled.

“We had to live in a very rough neighborhood. In fact, the woman who lived next door, she got murdered.”

Hill said her mom was already suffering from PTSD from having been raped when all this chaos surrounded her family. The stress took a toll on Denise and “sent her into a spiral” Hill said.

An exclusive clip shows the moment Hill realized in her adulthood that she should seek therapy after her mother told her she was “angry.”

“I think she’s still angry,” Denise said of her daughter.

“I am not. I am not angry,” Hill jokingly replied back.

“But it’s funny about how I started going to therapy because my mother said,’ I think you’re angry and you just don’t know you’re angry, and maybe you need to see somebody,’” Hill continued. “I’m like, ‘I ain’t angry!’”

Hill says her curiosity developed after being told she was angry and that prompted her to seek professional help.

“Yeah, ’cause I was like, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ So I was like, ‘Well, maybe I shall start seeing somebody just to see if this is true,’” she explained.

After attending therapy, Hill still believes she was never angry.

“What I found out is, like, that I wasn’t angry,” she quipped.

“Oh, you were angry,” her mother said in response.

“I’m not angry,” Hill said with a smile.

The candid discussion comes as Hill’s highly anticipated memoir, Uphill: A Memoir, which follows the journalist’s turbulent rise to success, hits stores.

The episode will stream at 9am PT / 12pm ET Oct. 26 on Facebook Watch.