NeNe Leakes Explains How RHOA Broke Up Her Marriage! And SO Much More Reality Tea!

NeNe Leakes is dishing about her time on The Real Housewives of Atlanta — and the toll her profession has taken on her private life.

As we reported on Monday, the 55-year-old TV veteran sat down with producer and podcast host Carlos King for an enormous two-part interview about her life and profession.

In our Monday night report, we coated fairly a little bit of the unlucky saga involving NeNe’s 33-year-old son Bryson Bryant, who has struggled for years with drug dependancy and authorized issues. And now, as this week’s full installment of the Reality With The King podcast has been launched, we’ve obtained a take a look at every thing else.

Related: NeNe Speaks Out Amid Ugly Fan Trolling Over Son Brentt’s Sexuality

In Tuesday’s podcast episode — the primary of two elements, with the second to be launched subsequent Tuesday — the Bravo vet obtained actual along with her RHOA producer pal about how the so-called actuality TV sausage was made.

Here are the highlights from their almost 90-minute-long chat (under)…

Low Salaries For A LONG Time!

Amazingly, although RHOA was successful from the beginning of its run method again in 2008, NeNe and the remainder of the solid didn’t receives a commission for YEARS.

She informed King in Tuesday’s interview that she solely made “a total of $10,000” to movie the primary season of the present. Then, when Bravo realized they’d successful on their arms, they provided NeNe “an extra $5,000” to movie the reunion. That’s all?! After a filming schedule that lasted three months! Oof!

NeNe didn’t keep in mind the Season 2 wage numbers off the highest of her head, however when King queried about it, she estimated she made “around $50,000” to movie that follow-up.

By seasons three and 4, the RHOA girls began to get sensible. NeNe recalled how she, Shereé Whitfield, Kim Zolciak-Biermann, and different OG stars “got the same attorney” to play hardball with Bravo. It ended up working — kind of — and the ladies made low six figures within the third season. Then lastly by the fourth season, NeNe and the remainder obtained big-time paydays.

Still, it took a very long time (and a LOT of labor) earlier than they got here to that time! Jeez!!

How Real Was RHOA?

The largest query on most viewers’ minds is at all times how actual RHOA actually is.

For NeNe, she says issues had been actual… at first. She says issues started to alter through the fifth season. That yr, Kenya Moore joined the solid, and alongside along with her addition, Leakes started noticing there have been extra made-up storylines and phony relationships inserted into the sequence. She needed to be very clear about one factor, tho: all of the OG Housewives began the run with their “real husbands” and “real boyfriends.”

NeNe defined:

“Our stories were real. Everything we talked about and did was real. When we had disagreements, they were real. We didn’t pretend like we had a boyfriend when we didn’t have one. Then I think once Kenya came on the show — I’m not saying that Kenya started it or did it — but at that moment, it started to be ‘let’s create our story line.’ Well, we didn’t create a story line [before that]. We just showed up to work and was just filming and being who we are.”

Inneresting…

Family Fractures

As we famous up prime, a giant portion of NeNe’s dialogue with King centered on dependancy problems with her son Bryson. But that wasn’t the one household downside Leakes needed to make clear with this podcast push.

During Tuesday’s present, she expressed remorse over bringing her sons — Bryson, whom she shares with ex Calvin Bryant, together with 24-year-old Brentt Leakes, whom she shared with late husband Gregg Leakes — onto the present in any respect.

Remembering one pivotal early-season second wherein she disciplined Brentt on digital camera when he was only a child, NeNe mentioned:

“I disciplined my son once on camera that everybody goes back and, and say, over and over, ‘you lost your damn mind.’ You know? I felt like that really hurt my son’s feelings. I don’t wanna hurt my children in the process of doing something that I wanna do. So I wished I could take that moment back.”

The Trouble With Gregg

Of course, NeNe and Gregg had been married for just about your entire time she filmed RHOA. They wed in 1997, had Brentt in 1999, after which ultimately known as it quits in 2010 earlier than reconciling three years later. From there, the Bravo-lebrity remained by Gregg’s facet till he tragically died from most cancers in 2021.

NeNe recalled how her marriage to Gregg had been glad… up till the time she started to out-earn him because the present took off:

“Gregg loved me for me, and he knew me for who I was. And also my husband was the breadwinner in my case. I wasn’t working and he made the money. And once I started to make more money than him, he started looking at me, like, sideways … Because I no longer had to ask him for money. I no longer had to ask him for anything. … And so I think that I pulled some of his strength or his power or something.”

Then, relating to their divorce in 2010, NeNe recalled how she was “devastated” over the cut up. Still, she knew she wanted to maneuver ahead with it to “teach him a lesson.”

She defined:

“The only lesson that Gregg was gonna get was for me to divorce him. And I was gonna have to carry it all the way through. And when I carried it all the way through, I will never forget. Gregg called me on the phone. He said, ‘you bitch, you divorced me.’”

At least he obtained the message, they usually ended up collectively? Tough love certainly…

Change Comes For All

Now that the present has been successful for thus a few years, and NeNe was on the heart of that success, she has turn out to be a actuality TV famous person. But together with that comes an ego — or a minimum of what others understand to be an ego.

Explaining how she hates being criticized for having “changed” through the years, NeNe mentioned:

“People like to say ‘you’ve changed over the years.’ Well, the thing is, you’re supposed to grow. Every year you get older, you know, it’s not like I’m getting younger. And you learn from your mistakes and you become more and more mature.”

And she continued:

“I think people try to say ‘ego’ when the cameras are watching you and all these people are pulling you apart every single day.”

Not flawed about that!

You can watch the total first a part of her interview on Reality With The King (under):

Damn. Definitely a wide-ranging interview.

Reactions, Perezcious readers??

[Image via Carlos King/Bravo/YouTube]