The Smith family legal drama never ends—and now it’s getting messier. Will Smith’s former best friend of nearly 40 years, Bilaal Salaam, is pushing hard to force Jada Pinkett-Smith to sit for a deposition in his $3 million lawsuit, despite already losing big in court and owing her serious money. Talk about doubling down.
According to court docs, Bilaal is asking a judge to order the actress to appear for a deposition within 30 days. The problem? He scheduled a date of May 20, but Jada did not appear. Rather than accept the L, Salaam’s legal team is now going for the nuclear option—court-ordered testimony.
But here’s the really embarrassing part: Bilaal is pushing to depose Jada after being ordered to pay more than $32,000 in her legal fees. That’s right. He’s fighting a battle he already lost, and he’s broke trying to do it. In court documents, Bilaal has claimed that he’s “certified homeless” and collects welfare benefits. Yet somehow he’s still dragging this thing through the courts.
So what’s this beef actually about? Rewind to late 2025, when Salaam filed a $3 million lawsuit. According to him, Salaam alleged Jada confronted him during Will Smith’s birthday celebration in September 2021 and warned that if he continued discussing her private business publicly, he would “end up missing or catch a bullet.” He also claims that after Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars in March 2022, Jada and her team launched “a retaliatory campaign” against him after he refused to help with crisis management.
The origin story goes back further. Salaam has described himself as “a best friend” of the Oscar-winning actor “for nearly 40 years”—which makes the fallout even uglier. When he refused to help the Smiths clean up after the Oscars slap, things got toxic fast. Then, when Pinkett Smith and members of her circle discovered he was working on a memoir that would include accounts of his time with the family, he claims the threats escalated.
Jada’s been denying all of it. Jada denied the allegations and was successful in getting the majority of the suit thrown out. Her legal team has made it clear they already got significant portions of his lawsuit dismissed under California’s anti-SLAPP law (which protects against frivolous suits designed to silence speech). They’re not trying to sit through a full deposition again. Jada’s team argues she already sat for a deposition in a separate legal proceeding filed against her by Bilaal, and because this lawsuit covers many of the same issues, her team wants any additional questioning to be limited to an hour of her time.
This whole situation screams desperation. Salaam is hemorrhaging money and credibility—he’s homeless, he owes Jada $32K, and a judge already sided with her. Yet he’s still fighting to drag her back to court. A judge has not yet ruled on the dispute, leaving the timeline and scope of any future deposition unresolved for now.
The 16BARS take: This is what happens when a failed shakedown meets a stronger woman with better lawyers. Salaam had his shot in court and lost. Jada already beat him down enough to get him to pay her legal fees. At this point, another deposition just looks like a man trying to make himself matter in a story where he’s already been written out.
