By Bryan Alexander, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES � A dire food allergy emergency is unraveling in the ER on the set of TNT's medical drama Hawthorne, and cameras are capturing every heart-thumping moment.
By Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY
the set of her TNT series 'Hawthorne,' Jada Pinkett Smith shares that she's "always calling audibles somewhere." She also serves as the command center for her famous family.
By Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY
the set of her TNT series 'Hawthorne,' Jada Pinkett Smith shares that she's "always calling audibles somewhere." She also serves as the command center for her famous family.
But a parking lot away, the series' star and executive producer, Jada Pinkett Smith, 39, is grabbing a few rays outside her set trailer. It's a low-key day compared with the usual 14-hour shooting schedule.
Her sultry, half-mast eyes come to life as her 10-year-old daughter, Willow, with her famous hair tightly corralled into two French braids, approaches.
"Umm, Mom?" Willow asks, leaning in close. "Can I go to Staples?"
Pinkett Smith immediately halts an interview and kicks into Mom mode, swiftly arranging a ride and proper supervision for her now-famous offspring.
The new plan: Willow will return from the office supply store with new gel pens. Pinkett Smith will finalize some work at the show's editing bay and shore up a Hawthorne script. Then the busy mother-and-daughter duo will head to their home in Calabasas.
When the show returns for its third season Tuesday (10 p.m. ET/PT), Christina Hawthorne, the heroic resident nurse played by Pinkett Smith, will again face life and death every week. But the actress has an equally complicated real-life task serving as the command center for one of Hollywood's most famous families while quarterbacking a television program."I'm always calling audibles somewhere," she says with a laugh. "That's what I do all day, whether it's on the Hawthorne set or not."
Pinkett Smith has a plan to push the show into a different league this season ? beginning with a traumatic bang in the premiere episode that affects the entire staff at James River Hospital throughout the summer's 10 episodes. The first episode, "For Better or Worse," picks up with Hawthorne pregnant at the wedding altar, and quickly goes from "for better" to "worse."
"This is our do-or-die season. We're pushing the envelope," she says. "We're going raw, and we're going hard and edgy."
Here comes Marc Anthony
Pinkett Smith also is adding a little "sizzle" in the form of Marc Anthony, who becomes a permanent Season 3 fixture after guest appearances during Season 2. Pinkett Smith says Anthony insisted on returning to the show.
"He and (wife Jennifer Lopez) would invite us over for dinner and it was like, 'Yo, what's going on with Hawthorne?'" says Pinkett Smith. "He was like, 'Let's do this!' He kept seriously reiterating it, and the team wanted nothing more than to have him. It was like, 'OK, let's figure this out.'"
A "passionate" Anthony agreed to sign on as the show's executive music producer and as Detective Nick Renata, a tough-talking romantic threat to Hawthorne's beau, Dr. Tom Wakefield (Michael Vartan). Pinkett Smith calls the result a "hard-core triangle" but won't go into detail.
But it's clear the on-screen sexual tension between Renata and Hawthorne is a source of amusement for the two friends and their spouses.
"We crack on it; it's just another thing we enjoy," says Anthony, adding that Pinkett Smith will laugh at some of his on-screen advances. "She will be like, 'Do not tell me that's how you roll with Jennifer, please!'"
For her part, Pinkett Smith finds herself jokingly warning her co-star, "Hey listen, you make sure J's cool with this now."
She adds, "I tell him Will (Smith, Jada's husband) is already talking payback, saying that Jennifer is going to be in his next movie."
Far from concerned, Lopez took time from her American Idol judging duties to visit the set and give some "dope insight" into her husband's character, Pinkett Smith says. Lopez's notes for Anthony: "You have to love Christina Hawthorne hard in order for this to make sense."
Anthony's addition to the cast also has meant that the respective families are, for the first time, neighbors. Anthony's customized trailer, large enough to hold a recording studio, sits perpendicular to Pinkett Smith's matching vehicle, the corners of their artificial green lawns overlapping. "I just moved to the neighborhood," Anthony says with a laugh. "It's the 90210 of parking lots. And it's a cool place to hang out."
Indeed, the Smith kids are a constant presence on the picnic table outside the trailer, giving the off-set area a feeling of "summer camp," Vartan says.
It's all the better to allow Pinkett Smith the opportunity to stay fully plugged into the burgeoning family franchise.
Willow, whose first pop music video, Whip My Hair, went viral with 54.7 million views to date on YouTube, is just one branch. There's also Karate Kid star Jaden, 12, who is prepping for his next movie, 1000 A.E., while working in the recording studio. Stepson Trey, 18, (Will's son from a previous relationship, whom she refers to as a "bonus son") just graduated from high school and is writing music for Hawthorne. And of course there is Will, now shooting Men in Black III in New York.
"My husband has his needs that he's calling me five times a day about," Pinkett Smith says with a laugh. "You can't drop the ball there."
Life at the Smith household is so complicated that rather than a family planner, their home kitchen features a 30-inch LCD screen that details everyone's complicated schedule ? with Mom at the center.
"I'm the glue that keeps it all together," Pinkett Smith says. "I'm the nucleus of an entertainment family. My day-to-day is making decisions to keep life above water."
Giggles amid the drama
Even with the parenting, the producing and the starring role that requires her to be in almost every scene, Pinkett Smith keeps a cool head, a ready laugh and a surprisingly goofy sense of humor, says Vartan ? whether it's joking with the craft services attendant at 2:30 in the morning or dealing with the prankster Anthony.
During filming of one Hawthorne scene featuring a dramatic Pinkett Smith close-up, an off-camera Anthony suddenly got the giggles.
"He had to turn his entire body and I could see he was shaking uncontrollably with laughter," says Vartan. "Jada was locked in and never broke. And when the director yelled cut, she just goes, 'You're terrible.'" "They just cracked up," he says. "It was hilarious."
The Smith family's drive and determination could even put Anthony to shame at the end of a 20-hour day.
"They're unbelievable. I feel like an underachiever when I hear what they've got going on," he says. "From Willow to Jaden to Will. I'm like 'Who are you?' You know what I mean? They just have it."
They've also kept it together in a town filled with Hollywood child-star horror stories. Pinkett Smith says it's her and her husband's lifestyle that sets the tone in keeping their kids grounded.
"Hollywood is not our life. It's what we do," she says. "We rarely come out of the house. Every time we go to a function, it's like 'Oh, my God, you guys came out of the cave.'"
The Smiths don't employ "old school" discipline with their kids.
"There are some of us who had the crap beaten out of us, and it worked. But for me, what I try to do is create a situation where they feel empowered," Pinkett Smith says.
Recently, Willow was on the phone after the house shut-off time of 11 p.m.
"I asked her how she was going to make this right and she said, 'Mommy, I think you should take the phone away for two weeks,'" says Pinkett Smith. "I'm good with that. When they cross the line, there's a conversation about how they want to fix it. Then they decide."
But the Hollywood veteran also is sure that in the days of TMZ, there is bound to be a slip-up.
"When Will and I were growing up, it was a different game," she says. "If we had microscopes on us growing up ?Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears didn't have jack on us.
"My kids will have their moment. It's inevitable. Just because they are grounded doesn't mean they are not going to get off-track at some point.
"But I know for a fact, they are going to be OK."
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