NEED TO KNOW
- Alana ‘Honey Boo Boo’ Thompson is talking out about what it was like rising up on actuality TV on this week’s cowl story forward of the discharge of the brand new Lifetime biopic I Was Honey Boo Boo
- The previous pageant princess particulars her rocky relationship along with her mom, Mama June, and the place they stand as we speak
- Alana additionally shares how she’s chasing her faculty desires: “I simply all the time informed myself you realize that you just wish to do one thing higher along with your life”
It’s uncommon to see the precise second a star is born however for Alana Thompson, that second is etched in TV historical past. She was 5 years previous and filming an interview on TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras, when she quipped, “A greenback made me holler, honey boo boo!”
Then a rambunctious spitfire within the Georgia pageant circuit, the one-liner birthed her nickname and helped land her a by-product actuality present. “I don’t know why however I mentioned it off the highest of my head,” she recollects. “‘Honey Boo Boo’ caught and she or he’s been there perpetually.”
However as we speak, Alana is a peaceful and reflective younger grownup. Honey Boo Boo makes small, fleeting appearances all through her interview for this week’s cowl story — a giggle right here, a slight neck roll there — however Alana, now a 19-year-old faculty pupil at Regis College in Colorado, is not a caricature of her personal making. She’s additionally seen sufficient to know the world isn’t all trophies and tea events. “Wanting again it’s like, ‘Dang, I actually went by way of all that s—? That’s loopy.’”
For properly over a decade the highs and heartbreaking lows of her household’s life have been documented on TV. After her Toddlers breakthrough, Alana turned the main focus of Right here Comes Honey Boo Boo in 2012. Meant to be a lighthearted take a look at a low-income, self-described “redneck” Southern household, the present centered on pageant princess Alana alongside along with her mom “Mama June” Shannon, three older sisters — Anna “Chickadee” Cardwell, Jessica “Chubbs” Shannon and Lauryn “Pumpkin” Efird — and Alana’s father, Mike “Sugar Bear” Thompson.
However the folksy household spectacle took a number of bleak turns. Now for the primary time Alana is telling her personal harrowing story as she narrates the brand new Lifetime biopic I Was Honey Boo Boo, premiering Might 17. “I’m a bit nervous,” admits Alana, now finding out nursing and dwelling with longtime boyfriend Dralin Carswell, 24.
From Mama June’s wild stage mother antics to her downward spiral into poisonous relationships and drug dependancy, Alana is opening up about what she and her sisters, together with Anna, who died in 2023, endured each on digicam and off. “I didn’t need this film to be throwing punches at my mama and making her out to be the unhealthy man,” Alana says. “However I didn’t maintain again and if she will get mad, on the finish of the day it’s the reality.”
Round 2019, Alana was a younger teen and Mama June, who’d started experimenting with medicine as a teen herself, was deep within the throes of dependancy to crack cocaine. Their household’s life imploded as cameras saved rolling. “I seen one thing was off about her,” Alana says of that point. “She began locking her doorways which actually made me assume, ‘Oh, what’s she doing?’”
In March of 2019 Mama June and then-boyfriend Eugene “Geno” Doak have been arrested and charged with felony possession of medication. In school, “Individuals have been like, ‘I noticed your mama on the information with a busted tooth, strung out,’” Alana recollects. “I’m like, ‘Nice, like I didn’t see that too.’”
However Alana refused to let that scenario outline her. With the assist of her sister Lauryn, who gained full custody of her in 2022, she targeted on college and graduated in 2023.
“I simply all the time informed myself you realize that you just wish to do one thing higher along with your life and greater along with your life than simply being on TV, so you have to stand up and go, you have to graduate so you can also make it to school and be the nurse that you just wish to be.”
Attending to the place she is now, a rising junior, wasn’t straightforward. One hurdle specifically was funds. Regardless of spending most of her life on TV, Alana says due to her mother, when she graduated there was little to indicate for it.
For extra on the tumultuous lifetime of Alana ‘Honey Boo Boo’ Thompson, decide up this week’s problem of ipromiseyoumedia, obtainable Friday.
The teenager claims Mama June, who offered their dwelling and different belongings within the peak of her dependancy, took $35,000 of her earnings for showing on Dancing with the Stars in 2019. Solely lately did she return it, however “there was no, ‘I’m sorry,’” says Alana. Moreover, she claims she’s by no means seen any cash from her years on Right here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
That mentioned, she and her mother, who’s been sober for greater than 5 years, have largely reconciled. The 2 nonetheless movie collectively on WeTV’s Mama June: Household Disaster returning for its seventh season on Might 30. “I can’t actually discuss [the money],” says Mama June. “That’s a part of this season.”
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Forgiveness, Alana says, “was arduous, however on the finish of the day, she’s my mother. When she was unhealthy in her dependancy I simply saved serious about the day she’d get better. We’re going fairly good. Hopefully it lasts. I simply not have any expectations for her.”
Provides Mama June of her previous transgressions: “I don’t bear in mind who that particular person was, as a result of I’ve labored a lot on myself.”
Today Alana has excessive expectations for herself. “Once I graduate I’ll be the one one in my household with a level,” she says. “I like that I’ve persevered previous who folks thought I used to be.”
I Was Honey Boo Boo premieres Saturday, Might 17 at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime.
