The recent news of Tina Knowles’ divorce from Richard Lawson has some social media users dragging OWN’s popular “Black Love” series. Some have even claimed the show must have been cursed because so many of its featured couples have separated.
The Knowles’ family matriarch filed for divorce from her actor husband on Wednesday, July 26, citing “irreconcilable differences.” It didn’t take long for the online armchair detectives to commence their investigation into what may have led the pair to split.
In the process, they dug up an old clip from a “Black Love” interview featuring the couple and did a deep dive into Lawson’s online behavior. After finding some less-than-ideal Twitter activity, in which Lawson liked pornographic tweets, they pummeled him for it, leading him to briefly deactivate his account.
Online users then aired out their theory that the “poof was in the pudding” based on Knowles saying Lawson was not perfect during the interview and his reaction to her statement.
“I envisioned the type of man I wanted. I prayed for the type of man I wanted, and I got pretty much that. Is he perfect? Absolutely, not,” Knowles said. Lawson looked at his wife perplexed then asked, “No?”
Knowles reiterated her stance with a slight roll of her eyes then continued saying, “but you know, he has a lot of the qualities that I love and we’re having a really good time and I’m enjoying life.”
Even after Knowles finished her statement by complimenting her husband, Lawson looked upset, leading some fans to speculate there was trouble in paradise all along. “I mean, the writings were on the wall for Tina Knowles and Richard Lawson,” one person tweeted.
Many agreed with her and brought up the fact that several of the couples featured on the OWN series are now divorced. In addition to Knowles and Lawson, Tia Mowry and Cory Hardrict, Devon Franklin and Meagan Good, LeToya Luckett and Tommicus Walker, Niecy Nash and Jay Tucker, and Cynthia Bailey and Mike Hill have all split.
The marriage of Mecca and Michael Elliott, a non-celebrity couple featured on the show, also ended in divorce.
“That #BlackLove show has had Tia & Cory, Meg & the pastor, Niecy Nash before she switched teams AND Tina and Richard Lawson on and where are they now? Divorced. OWN is the damn problem,” one Twitter user wrote.
“They saying Black Love is like the Madden Curse for couples,” another added.
A third asked, “Is the show Black Love Cursed or naw.”
Here are six other couples who fans say raised red flags during their respective interviews on “Black Love.” Watch closely.
Tia Mowry and Cory Hardict
Mowry and Hardict were married for 14 years and welcomed two children before divorcing in 2022. Like Knowles, Mowry cited “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for the break-up of her marriage. Some “Black Love” fans pointed out how annoyed Hardict seemed when Mowry interrupted him during their 2017 interview and noted it as one of several red flags.
Meagan Good and Devon Franklin
Good and Franklin were married for nine years when they announced their separation in 2021. Their divorce was finalized in 2022, but Good told Essence magazine that divorcing Franklin was “nothing that I would have ever chosen.”
During their 2017 appearance on “Black Love,” the two discussed their fears and something that became “a point of contention” until they made the “executive decision not to define each other by any role.” However the reason for their breakup is still largely unknown.
LeToya Luckett and Tommicus Walker
Luckett and Walker divorced in 2022 after three years of marriage. The couple went through pre-marital counseling as well as post-marital counseling, as shown in “T.I. & Tiny: The Family Hustle.”
Walker was accused of cheating while Luckett was pregnant with their second child, allegations which he denied and later led to their split. During their appearance on season 3 in 2019, Luckett described Walker as a reformed “hoochie looking for c**chie” – a claim he at first denied then admitted to. “Yea a lil bit, a lil bit,” he confirmed.
Niecy Nash and Jay Tucker
After appearing on “Black Love,” Nash and Tucker divorced in 2019 after eight years of marriage. In a joint Instagram post, the couple said they “are better as friends than partners in marriage” and were grateful for the time they shared together. According to BET, a source claimed that distance, Nash’s sex scenes on the show “Claws” and cosmetic surgery played a role in their split.
However, during their 2018 appearance on season 2, Tucker shocked viewers when he said, “it wasn’t chemistry that bought us together, it was competition.”
Nash responded, “So!” One YouTube user said the admission was, “So sad for so many different reasons.”
By 2020, Nash has moved on and married Jessica Betts as they shocked the world when they went public about their union.
Cynthia Bailey and Mike Hill
Cynthia Bailey and Mike Hill divorced in 2022 after two years of marriage and months of separation. On “Black Love,” Hill said Bailey was his “best friend in the world,” but admitted they went through difficult times. Bailey echoed they’d just come through one.
Hill denied rumors about infidelity, which many believed until Bailey later accused him of ‘inappropriate adulterous relations” in court docs obtained by TMZ. Bailey later withdrew that claim.
During a podcast interview, she said the “final straw” in her marriage to Hill came down to losing their foundation. “It felt like we weren’t friends anymore.”
Mecca and Michael Elliott
Mecca and Michael divorced in 2019, the year after they appeared on the show. However, they opted to call their separation an “authentic uncoupling” instead of a divorce in a video announcement on Instagram. They admitted that they are now “loving each other without attachment.” On “Black Love,” they discussed the rocky patches in their relationship prior to the show. Mecca talked about her battle with sickness and learning to find clarity during the marriage through meditation.
These instances show a universal fact – married couples don’t always agree and sometimes grow apart. But does the data truly support the accusation that the “Black Love” series is to blame? Or is social media just ‘social-media-ing’ with its typical misinformation and disregard for actual facts?
Some users are defending the show against the claims, saying many of the couples who divorced didn’t seem like good matches in the first place.
“I loved this show. As a married person (15 yrs), I got a lot out of the show. Hearing the stories, there were some areas that i took to heart and improved. BUT…If you watched the body language and really listened to each couple, you could tell which ones weren’t going to last,” one Instagram user commented.
Created by husband-and-wife duo Tommy and Codie Oliver to combat negative stereotypes about Black love and marriages, the show ran from 2017 to 2022, when the Olivers said they decided to end the show due to increased demands in other areas of their lives.
The show featured over 40 of the 250 couples the Olivers interviewed while they were running the Black Love brand, which included a website. Many of them are still married, belying the negative buzz surrounding the six celebrity couples.
Here are a few couples that are still going strong after “Black Love”: Viola Davis and her husband Julius Tennon, former NFL player Eddie George and SWV singer Taj George, comedian D.L. Hughley and his wife LaDonna Hughley, Rev Run and his wife Justine Simmons, Grant Hill and Tamia, Sterling K. Brown and Ryan Michelle Bathe, R&B singer Tank and Zena Foster, Tabitha Brown and husband Chance, “Greenleaf” actor Keith David and his wife Dionne, and R&B singer Kenny Lattimore and Judge Faith Jenkins.
