With the “Basketball Wives” finale now over, it’s time to get the scoop on just what happened over the course of this season and why. You’ve already read my interview with Jennifer Williams. Now, it’s time to have a discussion with Tami Roman.
EXCLUSIVE: Jennifer Williams on the Eric Williams drink throwing finale fight
You know Tami Roman is honest--she doesn’t hold back her feelings for anyone. But what you probably don’t know (and I didn’t either until I spoke with Roman on the phone last week) is that Tami is a great listener. She hears everything you say, and will address each and every point you bring up in conversation.
That’s why, in particular, my interview with Tami is so fascinating--she doesn’t gloss over anything. She makes it plan.
Our conversation touched on everything from her fights with Evelyn Lozada to Twitter beefs, black stereotypes, Meeka Claxton, and whether or not she’ll be back for season four.
There’s so much to get into that this Q&A will be broken up into two parts.
In part one, Tami talks about her evolving relationship with Evelyn, how Jennifer and Royce’s arguments often seem to stem from Twitter, and whether or not “Basketball Wives” promotes negative stereotypes of black women.
*Edit*: Part two of my interview with Tami Roman can now be found here.
...
Can you talk about your relationship with Evelyn and its overall progression this season? Last season ended with you two literally fighting, and this season, Evelyn considered making money off of her “non-factor” T-shirts. How were you ultimately able to forgive Evelyn and move on?
A lot of people on Twitter have asked the same question, so now I can address it once and for all.
Evelyn and I--we came to like each other in taping [‘Basketball Wives’]. And what a lot of people didn’t understand about the last incident that happened with us in season two was our disagreement, what you guys saw, it appeared what we were arguing about was Kenny [Anderson].
My position on that argument was that [Evelyn] was someone I was getting to know, that I felt cool with, and you held onto this secret [that Evelyn once slept with Kenny years ago]. It really had nothing to do with Kenny. Kenny and I have now been divorced for 12 years. It’s not an issue of Kenny. It was really based on [the idea that] we were developing a friendship and I felt that there were several opportunities where she could’ve disclosed that information to me.
After our altercation on TV, Evelyn called me and we were able to have a conversation about what had transpired. We were literally together the next day after that incident because we sat down, we talked, and I was able to explain to her how I felt. I felt we were growing into being cool with each other, and to tell me something like that on TV, it felt like the ultimate form of betrayal. And she openly admitted that she should’ve told me in a different way, in a different venue. So we were able to put all that aside, it wasn’t hard for me to do, because my issue wasn’t about Kenny. It was about us and what we were trying to build. And as long as we both now understand that, I can definitely get over the issue with Kenny because at that particular phase in [my relationship with Kenny], we were separated. We weren’t divorced, but we were separated.
Now we move back to the [‘non-factor’ T-shirt argument] and what ultimately happened was she saw a way to make money. That saying took a life of its own on Twitter. It became “everybody is a non-motha-f*****g factor”--that became the new slogan.
So she said, I figure I can make money off of this, I’m gonna make T-shirts. Not really looking at it from my standpoint of it came from such a negative place. So this year, we decided we wanted to show people we are able to [work through our differences], because last time, we did it behind scenes off camera, and it was literally just me and her having a discussion. This time, we wanted to show people we don’t have to fight, we don’t have to go at each other all the time, there is a way for us to reach a happy medium and we wanted to show people we could work through that.
So that’s where you see us having our initial discussion where I let her know I was very unhappy with the T-shirts, she tells me her side that she’s going ahead with the T-shirts. Then I come up with the bright idea that if she thinks I’m going to sue her, she will get rid of the T-shirts. [And] that didn’t work. That was really just a scare tactic. And so I said, rather than playing games, let’s just try to really talk this out and come up with a happy medium, a compromise that’ll will make everybody happy. And that’s what [viewers] saw us do at the dinner.
This season of “Basketball Wives” saw Jennifer and Royce get into an argument over something that Royce allegedly tweeted on Twitter. A similar fight between the two happened on the season 2 reunion show.
What are your thoughts on Twitter, as well as how fights, like with Jennifer and Royce, can start in cyberspace and then carry over into the real world?
With regards to Jennifer and Royce, I think that the show in and of itself--like VH1, they want us to tweet about the show. They like us to live tweet. And so, what happened last year, something happened with Jennifer’s [leaked topless pictures hitting the Internet]. Royce made a comment that said [Jennifer] should just cancel her Twitter account. And that pissed Jennifer off because she felt like Royce was agreeing with people thinking that she leaked her own pictures. And to me, it all feels very juvenile. Twitter is a social media outlet, it is for people to say what they want to say. If you’re not up for that, there’s a block button. Or you don’t establish a Twitter account.
So this season I was just like ‘You guys just need to talk’ because it’s so juvenile what they’re arguing about. Everybody has a right to their opinion, and people are going to [voice] how they feel. And Royce is somebody who is very similar to me in the sense that she’s going to say how she feels. She felt that Jennifer leaked her pictures. She was very vocal about that on the [season 2] reunion, and she didn’t try to sugarcoat it. And I think that that aspect, Jennifer couldn’t really handle, based on the fact that she thought that Royce was her friend from the very first season. She felt that I took Royce under my wing, and just tried to give her a makeover and help her out and be a friend to her and she was a little offended that Royce would believe that she leaked her pictures.
So that was what that whole argument was about, but they chose to air that out on Twitter rather than talking to each other directly. To me, it’s just a nature of the Internet beast. You give people these ways to voice their opinion via blog, via Facebook, via Twitter, via Myspace, via LinkedIn--there’s so many ways to stay connected to people, and people are using those mediums to express themselves and you just have to get over it. It is what it is.
Shaunie O’Neal recently wrote a piece for CNN on reality television. And in it, she talked about how certain shows can promote stereotypes and ultimately damage the image of black women. Where do you stand on this topic? Do you think “Basketball Wives” perpetuates negative black female stereotypes?
Shaunie is caught between a rock and a hard place because she’s not the only executive producer. So, I know when she initially went with this concept to them, what ‘Basketball Wives’ has evolved into is not her creative mindset at work. What ultimately ended up happening is that when you do reality TV, the whole thing that drives it is the dramatic aspect. If you have six, seven people who all get along, nobody finds that interesting.
Proof positive is Shaunie tried to express to VH1 that ‘my initial idea will work. People want to see us do positive things. People want to see us getting along.’ And she came out with ‘Football Wives.’ ‘Football Wives’ has since been canceled because people don’t want to see that.
Even with our show, we do so many positive things. There were several tapings with my mom. My mom is battling diabetes, and that was very heartfelt and touching to me, and I felt that should’ve been on the show. Shaunie and I helped put a young girl through a semester of college, I felt that should’ve been on the show. There were aspects with me and my daughter, and Royce auditioning for Broadway, and things that everybody’s going through that are far more positive and far more relevant to trying to put out positive imagery. That stuff does not make it.
They’ll shoot it. If this is your storyline, we’ll tape it. But when it goes to editing, people only want to see the dramatic stuff. Literally, the argument that you see may only happen over a weekend. We tape for four months. But they’ll take the biggest arguments we have, and those become the focal points of the storyline. That is not our fault. We would absolutely love to see more positive imagery, but the audience doesn’t want to see that.
- You can now read part two of my interview with Tami here!
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