After four years, NeNe Leakes is finally explaining just what led up to that wild altercation in her closet during The Real Housewives of Atlanta Season 11.
If your memory needs refreshing, Kandi Burruss and a pregnant Porsha Williams mosied their way into NeNe’s walk-in closet. When a cameraman started to follow them in, all hell broke loose. NeNe grabbed the cameraman, ripped his t-shirt, and the rumors went crazy alleging that she choked him and sent him to the hospital.
Now, NeNe is clearing the air, and during her recent interview with Bethenny Frankel, she explained just why the closet trespassing was so triggering for her. According to the RHOA alum, she wasn’t hulking out on the production team for no reason, nor was the situation as bad as it looked.
Closetgate: debunked
Bethenny and NeNe chatted through a ton of topics during their two-part interview on Bethenny’s podcast. Of course, Bethenny is in the process of trying to burn Bravo down to the ground, and NeNe is the perfect person to pick up a torch.
When chatting through the infamous closet fight, NeNe painted a totally different picture from what was portrayed on TV. The day of the closet fight was also the day of her Bye Wig party, an all-cast event where the ladies were supposed to come with their natural hair. NeNe said that this was the same time when Gregg Leakes was diagnosed with cancer. She didn’t want to have the party, but production persuaded her to do it anyway. Her only caveat was that her closet was off-limits.
NeNe said, “I say to my producer, ‘Listen, you guys can film, I just don’t want anybody to go into my closet, right?’ They promised me no one would go into my closet, and I’m telling you, they told those girls to do it. And they were telling to do it at a time when they also knew I was at my lowest at that point.”
Hindsight is 20/20, but NeNe said that if she could do it all over again, she probably wouldn’t have even had the Bye Wig party in the first place. She continued, “They knew that Greg was in the hospital with cancer, and they knew that honestly, we probably shouldn’t have done that all-cast scene at my house.”
Blame it on the edit
NeNe continued to clarify exactly how everything went down with the altercation with the cameraman. According to her, the RHOA editors chopped up the moment to make it look more extreme than what it was.
“The guy who had the camera’s a big ass guy, right? And I grabbed his t-shirt,” NeNe explained. “But the way they put it out to the world made it look as if I did something to him, like if I beat him or hit him.”
After the altercation, NeNe’s name was in the press for weeks as fans complained about her behavior. Rumors at the time made it seem like she sent the guy to the hospital and knocked out his teeth. According to NeNe, the way she was framed in such a negative light after the closet situation was just another example of how Black Housewives are viewed with a much more critical lens.
“I personally think when the brown girls do something, it is much more elevated than when you nice vanilla-looking girls are doing something. I don’t feel like it’s the same,” NeNe explained to Bethenny. “Those to me, those girls are pulling each other’s wigs off, busting glasses, pushing each other. We don’t push each other.”
TELL US – DO YOU SEE THE CLOSET SITUATION DIFFERENTLY AFTER NENE’S EXPLANATION? WOULD YOU HAVE CONTINUED WITH THE EVENT IF YOU WERE IN NENE’S SHOES?
