It feels like years ago, but in 2019, Jaden Smith pulled a shift at a Woolies in Melbourne to promote his boxed water brand, Just Water. Since then, the whole world has come to a standstill, being in large groups feels like a foreign concept, supermarkets became a hellzone for a bit, and Jaden Smith has had to halt progress on his many inventions, apart from releasing new music.
PEDESTRIAN.TV caught up with Jaden for the first time since he donned the Fresh Food People uniform, to see whether he’d come back for another Woolies shift, and what he would have done if he was clocked on during the great toilet paper panic buying saga of 2020.
Beaming in from over in California – which is experiencing a fire season eerily similar to our Black Summer earlier this year – Jaden told us that pulling that Woolies shift was one of the more awesome things he’s done.
“I loved it. It was so much fun to actually be there and make that video,” he said.
“It was cool to promote Just Water, and then also to just talk to people and just have fun in Australia, and hang out with everyone. That was really fun.”
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Since Jaden (sans Smith on his magnetic nametag) did his one-off shift at a lucky Woolies in Melbourne, the supermarket chain has been the stage for people physically fighting over toilet paper when the coronavirus pandemic first got serious. I asked Jaden what he would have done if he had seen people punching on over shit tickets in aisle six, and his response was perfect.
“Man, I would just start running for more toilet paper,” he said.
“Just head to the back to find more, to let everyone know that we had a surplus of toilet paper in the back, and we just hadn’t stocked the shelves fully, and that’s why you thought we had no toilet paper.
“Just like start throwing toilet paper at people like ‘No! We have toilet paper!’”
I mean that’s one way to diffuse the situation, sure.
Though he can’t physically tour his new record, Cool Tape Vol. 3, Jaden told me that the first thing he wants to do when everything returns to some semblance for normality is get on a plane. With a return to Australia being high on the list of places he wants to go back to.
And the top of the list of things Jaden wants to do when he makes it back to Australia? Go to the Gold Coast, and pull his second shift at Woolies.
Hell yeah, we’ll make a Woolies Fresh Produce manager out of you yet, Jaden Smith.
