Tamar Braxton’s unceremonious exit from “The Real” two years ago has gone without explanation for some time, but now, her former co-host Loni Love has addressed what led to the singer’s firing.
Love explained on “The Breakfast Club” Friday, Oct. 12 that during the first and second seasons of their daytime talk show, she, Braxton, Tamera Mowry-Housley, Adrienne Houghton, and Jeannie Mai were all different people and didn’t know each other well. Still, Love was excited to get to work on a show for women of color and she maintained she had no involvement on who was cast. When she sat in on the auditions, she said the women who were picked were the best of those who came through.
“We had a different type of show back then,” she says. “Then season 2 happened and it was getting better but there’s something that had happened and I don’t know what happened … everybody has a different story with Tamar. My story is this.”
Love explained that as she sat with Braxton in the singer’s kitchen, Braxton said she wanted new management and asked Love for the number of Steve Harvey’s former manager, Rushion McDonald. Love gave the reality star McDonald’s number. But then, Braxton broached the subject of having her husband Vince Herbert manager her.
“I believed in her talent so much that if she asked me for something, we all sisters … even when her sisters wasn’t around, we were around for her,” Love says. “So when the incident happened when she got fired, I didn’t know about it because I went on ‘The Wendy Williams Show’ that Friday. Why would I go on ‘The Wendy Williams Show’ if I knew one of my castmates was gonna get fired that next Monday? I got a call on Saturday that said Tamar was being let go.”
Love and Houghton then explained that the women jumped into a text thread and tried to get in touch with Braxton but the star failed to respond to their inquiries and stopped talking to them.
“She put out an Instagram that she said she had been backstabbed and the first person she unfollowed was me, so people assume that I was the one [responsible],” Love explains. “And then, I know Tamar cause she’s a good person. She probably saw all the heat that I was getting, then she unfollowed Jeannie. Then, after a couple of days, she unfollowed [Mowry-Housley and Houghton]. These two was still trying to get in contact with her because they went to [Braxton’s son] Logan’s birthday party to talk to her.”
Love said she later caught a flight to Atlanta and ran into Braxton’s sister Towanda Braxton on the plane. Towanda told her an emergency episode of “Braxton Family Values” was taped that showed Herbert was pinning Tamar’s firing on her and her co-hosts.
“I called my attorney I said, ‘You gotta call WEtv and let them know that if they’re naming us, we’re going to have to have legal action because we had nothing to do with this defamation of character,” Love says.
WE tv ultimately aired a different version of the episode without “The Real” hosts being named.
“There was a blogger that actually saw the rough cut and it says Vince names us saying that we jealous — he names me specifically — and you know why he does that? Because I gave [Tamar] the number of Rushion McDonald,” Love says.
The co-hosts also confirmed that they have not spoken to Braxton ever since she left the talk show. Love also added that there was something that had fallen through for Herbert and Tamar and he tried to “save face” by pinning his now-estranged wife’s firing on the hosts.
Online, fans shared their own feelings on the matter.
“I honestly think Vincent (Tamar Ex Husband) got her fired from the Real.”
“The show boring without Tamar…”
