Gloria, Lili, Emily: breaking down taboos and empowering latino families in ‘Red Table Talk’

GLORIA: Two years ago Jada Pinkett Smith came to me with her cast from Westbrook, in the company of Jada and Will (Smith) with Ellen Rakieten, a woman who has been one of the largest parts of Oprah‘s empire for many years and she is from the cream of the crop in the American world and we knew that by now being fans of Jada’s show, they were doing a spectacular job. She came up with the idea of inviting Emily, Lili, and me to do the show. So, I thought it was amazing because I was going to be able to spend more time with them, even though we spent a lot of time together anyway; but, I thought we could make a big contribution and we know what we had to undertake, the challenge.

LILI: When my aunt calls me, imagine that they tell you that you are going to do a project with two of the women I love the most in my life, which is with my family. Immediately I say: “I want to do it!” But when I said yes, I had never really analyzed the Jada show. I said yes and then, I don‘t know… I think a few weeks passed, I sat down to watch the show and I said: “My God! I said yes, how is this going to be? The more I watched Jada’s show, the more I fell in love with the project she was doing because, indeed, I think the first time is like a shock. How does one feel talking about these things? But the more you listen and watch more programs, the more you get into the content and realize how needy society is, maybe families like us, like Jada’s, to open up, to put everything on the table and to be, I do not know, like an example. We have a lot of responsibility, right? I think the purpose is that people feel like us and put those things on the table that they never dare to do and that people say: ”hey, if they are doing it, why not me in my house too” .

EMILY: Now we have the example of incredible women, two here with us, who have changed the idea of how we can navigate this entertainment industry. It is not so common to talk about important familiar things on a platform for people to see. If you‘re not looking specifically for it, it’s hard. It’s not natural for human beings not to have problems, it’s natural to have problems, go through things, have to solve them and we have, you know, math, and sending rockets to the moon and this and that. But, we still can’t even talk. There is so much hate and so much black stuff in space between us. I am only 25 years old, it is not a long time on the planet. I imagine it’s easier for me to start talking and blah, blah, blah… because I’m still getting to know myself, but for all three generations, as my cousin says, it is important to learn from each other.

GLORIA: Two years ago Jada Pinkett Smith came to me with her cast from Westbrook, in the company of Jada and Will (Smith) with Ellen Rakieten, a woman who has been one of the largest parts of Oprah‘s empire for many years and she is from the cream of the crop in the American world and we knew that by now being fans of Jada’s show, they were doing a spectacular job. She came up with the idea of inviting Emily, Lili, and me to do the show. So, I thought it was amazing because I was going to be able to spend more time with them, even though we spent a lot of time together anyway; but, I thought we could make a big contribution and we know what we had to undertake, the challenge.

LILI: When my aunt calls me, imagine that they tell you that you are going to do a project with two of the women I love the most in my life, which is with my family. Immediately I say: “I want to do it!” But when I said yes, I had never really analyzed the Jada show. I said yes and then, I don‘t know… I think a few weeks passed, I sat down to watch the show and I said: “My God! I said yes, how is this going to be? The more I watched Jada’s show, the more I fell in love with the project she was doing because, indeed, I think the first time is like a shock. How does one feel talking about these things? But the more you listen and watch more programs, the more you get into the content and realize how needy society is, maybe families like us, like Jada’s, to open up, to put everything on the table and to be, I do not know, like an example. We have a lot of responsibility, right? I think the purpose is that people feel like us and put those things on the table that they never dare to do and that people say: ”hey, if they are doing it, why not me in my house too” .

EMILY: Now we have the example of incredible women, two here with us, who have changed the idea of how we can navigate this entertainment industry. It is not so common to talk about important familiar things on a platform for people to see. If you‘re not looking specifically for it, it’s hard. It’s not natural for human beings not to have problems, it’s natural to have problems, go through things, have to solve them and we have, you know, math, and sending rockets to the moon and this and that. But, we still can’t even talk. There is so much hate and so much black stuff in space between us. I am only 25 years old, it is not a long time on the planet. I imagine it’s easier for me to start talking and blah, blah, blah… because I’m still getting to know myself, but for all three generations, as my cousin says, it is important to learn from each other

GLORIA: It was important to me, when we started this show, to read the reactions and I was shocked because people are really having a very big connection. The other day, I remember a person who had an opinion about Karla Souza when she spoke on the show that she was speechless. I had told her that she was actually under so much pressure that she found a way to shut up and her mind shut her up too. There was a 64-year-old who said, “Oh my God! I did not know that this was a thing that could happen and I have suffered this for a whole life and had never been to a doctor. I already made an appointment for next week.” I have shared many difficulties in my life, particularly one I had in the last chapter on mental health when I was young, long ago with my father. Every difficult thing that I have gone through has strengthened me, has helped me deal with things that came later in the world. It is very nice to have the love, the support of so many people really in my music.

LILI: I have read several messages from friends from 25 years ago who had never opened up to tell me about such personal things that happened in their life as they are now watching ‘The Red Table Talk.’ They have gone to the past and have realized things that they did right or wrong. They have called their relatives again and tried to talk about it, to normalize it. Now, if I talk to you personally, I think that the issue of my divorce, for example, is something that I think I would never have opened up to talking about if I was not surrounded by these people that I love and that lived it with me. My ex was found by a paparazzi and I immediately found out and the photos had been taken to my show. Obviously, when something like this happens to you in life you don‘t know where to start. Of course I owed the public an explanation, why? because I am the woman who appears on the most important Hispanic entertainment show every day and has to talk about the rest of the people; but I was not talking about me. I tried for two years to save my family and I couldn’t. So, if I went out to speak at that moment, I knew I wasn’t ready, I would have said ten nonsense comments and today I would have regretted it. That taught me that if you are very happy, don’t make decisions. If you are very sad, do not make decisions. I think this pandemic has given the three of us a different perspective on how to run this show and how to do it with honesty and love and that authentic aspect on the table. Before March we had to have recorded, I was not as ready as I am now. I had just signed the divorce that month.

GLORIA: You were raw, skinny. We recorded the eight episodes in a three-week period that helped a lot also because you get into the flow of the show. But when we told her that we thought it was a good idea to start with her, because we wanted each person to connect with us, and to realize that we were going to be open and united, she said: why? no! It was the best! It was a special way to start the show. If we are going to start, we are going to start from something that we all live as a family and at the same time we sit at the table. I am going to be honest, it is not that we are trying to do something new, we are simply existing in that intimate space of the three of us, which we have shared for decades. Lili has known Emily since she was born. Emily has known Lili‘s daughter since she was born. Lili lived with us the first years after she arrived from Cuba. She, her father, and her brother lived with Emily and me in a four-room house. That [trust] has to exist and in this situation it exists and it helps the three of us to open ourselves up like this, because we are in a safe place. The cameras are hidden, the vast majority, and apart from that, we can also ignore them.

EMILY: I also think that there are so many Latino families, from all over the world, but it‘s a Latino thing or I see it a lot. It’s a large family and very close all the time, but also in those families many times things are not talked about. You don’t talk about sex, you don’t talk about drugs. My grandmother, for example, who came from another generation, when I sat down to talk to her about difficult things, it was interesting because she came from another world and I from another world for her, right? We were breathing the world of each one, but also learning and that for me is ‘The Red Table’ because, there are difficult moments, in which we cry and it is normal, you see that the table did not melt with tears. It is unavoidable.

LILI: I found a peace in this pandemic that I never thought I would find so early in this process that I have lived. I think instead of COVID-19, I got COVID-17. The world stopped for me in 2017 and everything was going at such a fast speed. Everyone wanted to get me out, to meet someone, to do something, because people want to see me happy and people imagine the things that can make you happy. Everyone tries to give you everything and they fill your mind so much that you can‘t find peace. God’s times are perfect. I never imagined that I would find a way to explain what had happened to me because I have always been a very hard-working woman, a woman who has been hit hard by life and had to stop immediately and go do the same thing everyday, to my work specifically. I am not an accountant, I am not a lawyer. I have to have a huge smile every day and entertain everyone. Where did I get the strength every day to do that? I have no idea, because here are these two women who have seen me suffer and go through the worst moments of my life since my mother died, when I was 10 years old. Having the opportunity to have been able to find this show that allowed me to expose what I experienced as a woman, that is, not as a public person, not as Lili Estefan, not as the woman who has the surname Estefan, not as the woman who has that image on Instagram of shoes, wallet and all that movement. I went to therapy, tried to be me. Latinos usually tell you not to cry in front of your children, that no one can know what is happening. I feel good about myself, I wish him all the best in the world, because I want him to be happy. I mean, if he wasn’t happy here, I want him to be happy. Even though he doesn’t speak to me, because we haven’t talked in two years, I send him messages and he never answers

LILI: We don‘t know, he might be embarrassed. He was a person who liked to be very private. The shame has beat him, the responsibility that he actually has to face it and to be able to overcome that moment. It’s the only thing I can think of. It is one thing for the marriage to end, another thing for the family to end. Not only do I not have communication with him; Maybe I don’t have [communication] with my children’s uncle, who is his godfather, his cousin; the two closest people who were to this family besides him. The two are no longer present in my children’s lives.

LILI: Never! We never had a conversation in which we could fix ourselves, in which we could give a chance to 25 years of marriage or 28 that we had together, do you understand me? We didn‘t have a chance at anything, zero, and I think it was because of him. I was open at all times to try to do something, to be able to solve something.

LILI: No, I don‘t see myself. I think I have been with a man for so many years that I am really enjoying freedom, being alone, getting to know myself more than ever. Spending all the time with my children, because I am a mother hen in almost everything, I love helping them in everything, it is what makes me happy. I don’t think this is the time for them to see me with another man. I think that is an issue that we should bring to the table. Divorced women, at what moment do they feel that they may be rebuilding their lives, because one thing is the image of a mother, another thing is the image of a mother in love with another man. I say that “all taxis come full.” Men come with another family, with fifty problems. At this age it is not the same to fall in love as when I fell in love with Lorenzo, we were both babies; So am I willing to put up with another man with a full taxi? The answer is no. I cannot imagine while my children are not with their lives made, married and everything, having a partner like that next to them.

LILI: I have not dated, but thanks to the pandemic I have several virtual boyfriends (laughs). And I explain to all of them, I see them worse than I do not know. It doesn‘t occur to me that I’m dating, and I have suitors, thank God. There is nothing more beautiful for a woman than feeling flattered, that you have 10 men calling you and looking for you, asking you out. It seems very cute to me, the truth and I send kisses to all, and they appear of all ages, from Emily’s age to older than my dad.

LILI: A 27-year-old who I knew for a long time because he worked for me. Crazy! It is rare, when a woman is married for so many years and at the moment you are alone, it is a process. You go out to dinner with couples who are friends of yours and you feel sorry that they want to pay for you, I want to pay all the time, I am rather grateful that they are taking me out of the house, and then I always feel like: “Oh, God everyone is in a couple.” I am the first to get divorced in the whole group, they are all married.

EMILY: We are in a world where when you talk about something personal someone is always going to have an opinion. Those are the beautiful things and it also has its difficult things. The important thing is to learn respect and how to talk about issues in a way that doesn‘t hurt someone. For example, there were times when I hurt my mom with my words, she hurt me, I hurt my dad; that is family, we have different worlds. Ten years ago, I heard jokes at school that were horrible but you do not understand, now times change and we begin to see the mistakes of human history but it is not something we should hide, it is something we have to celebrate. When it comes to the issue of sexuality for Latinos it is even very difficult, for example: if you go to a country in the world, they kill you if you are gay, they put you in jail, they throw stones at you ... this is still happening. We have to teach the world that if you love the person you are with it is fine, what you do with your partner that is private, it does not matter if it is a man, a woman or whatever. In that sense, I do think that from ancient times you have to preserve a certain respect, like class, but there are certain things that you have to change. So yeah, it was difficult obviously and we were all going through our own things: Lily was getting divorced, my grandmother was sick, I was going through this. In those moments, people go inward and sometimes forget our family and the people who are there, supporting us.

EMILY: Since I was born I know I want to be married, I want children. I had weddings with all my dolls, always obsessed with family. Being with a woman is difficult because it brings obstacles when you want to have a child; But, before being with someone, she was open to the possibility of adoption. There are so many children who need parents, so I always knew that nothing was going to stop me from achieving it. Now, I‘m with my girlfriend for almost 4 years, which in gay years is like 35 (laughs).

EMILY: It‘s just that it’s difficult because I don’t even know what it’s like to be married, I think it’s different. Now, I do think that my generation is (as my mother says) going very fast, a lot of information! Relationships are not like that, they are difficult, they go through things, it is not always happiness and many times now when something happens or you feel that it is something difficult or you have to make an effort for the relationship, our generation jumps to the next thing and we are never strengthening it, because you have to learn to navigate and be with a person sharing your life. If I am in that situation like the one my cousin went through, I hope not, the truth is that what she experienced is a master class in how to overcome difficult things in life.

LILI: He was the one who filed for the divorce. My poor assistant was the one crying here with me because she got the first email. I had finished the program on a Monday at 5:00 p.m., I was in the Univision parking lot talking to Raúl De Molina and I said: “bye, Rauli.” I answered Maria, my assistant, and she was already crying: ”Lorenzo put you in for a divorce” ... to make a long story short, the worst thing I think I suffered is that I had no way to face this. That‘s where Gloria arrived, because my aunt has historically been the woman who solves every problem, and she told her: “I can’t” and she told me: “Flaca, this is reality, you are imagining a question that no longer exists” and carrying out that process, for her it was very difficult because we were my lawyer, her and me. I understood, I had to get a divorce, I had to sign that paper and that is what has given me peace in the end. That’s how I went through this process, I can’t imagine women who aren’t lucky enough to have a Gloria Estefan next to them.

EMILY: My mom and dad ... it‘s amazing to see them. Each person who knows them learns nothing more than by spending time with them, because the way they love each other, the respect. That is another secret with successful marriages: each person has their world and together they make another world. My dad always has so many things and he’s in the studio and my mom can be outside with the dogs, but at night they are there together, watching her show. You have to create the life that you want to see and share it with that person and open space, always complement each other.

LILI: Emilio always tells me: “when you get old, you have to take a bath, put on perfume,” that is, he has not lost that desire for my aunt to still see him good looking and that is so incredible. He says it constantly: “we old people cannot leave ourselves.”

GLORIA: I don‘t see him as old. I look at him and I’m seeing the boy I met when I was 22 years old. He will always be that for me.

GLORIA:There is no secret. It makes me happy to be of service to others. I do not know if it is because I am a Virgo and we want to be at the service of humanity, but I feel very comfortable. I have always felt very safe in my own skin, even when I went through that difficult time that my father was so ill, that I was desperate and did not see that that was going to change. That‘s what happens with youth, sometimes they act impulsively and do things like take their own lives because they are desperate and they don’t see that things are going to change. Since I was little I felt old, I felt younger when I met Emilio, perhaps because of all the problems I had to go through, but I have felt younger the longer it has been because my life has been relieved, I have freed myself from a lot of things, very dark and difficult, that I lived in my youth. With Emilio we are a balance, because we are very different in personality; But with things that are really worth such as values, what motivates one, priorities, we are on the same page and it is very important not to be constantly fighting because when you are fighting over nonsense, love is diluted. It helps a lot that he and I rarely differ in politics, in business, in music, in the family. He always leaves me notes, he doesn’t stop taking care of me, he’s always thinking of me. If I go on a trip, I find pieces of paper that say: “baby, I love you, I’m going to miss you” in the places where you least expect it, when I go to brush my teeth or on the pillow. It means that he is thinking of me and I always try to think of him and support him in what he wants to do. I give him the freedom to be in the studio with J.Lo, with Madonna, Shakira. I trust him, because we have a lot of respect for each other.