LaTavia Roberson shared how her life changed after leaving Destiny’s Child during an interview with singer and YouTube sensation Terrell Grice on Nov. 7. Roberson was an original member of the group, then called Girl’s Tyme, after auditioning at the age of 8.
After joining Destiny’s Child, the Houston group, including Roberson, Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland, and LeToya Luckett, signed to Columbia Records in 1997. Unfortunately, Roberson and Luckett were fired from the group in 2000 after bumping heads with the group’s manager and Beyoncé’s father, Mathew Knowles. They were promptly replaced by Michelle Williams and Farrah Franklin.
LaTavia Roberson shares a photograph on Instagram. (Photo: @iamlatavia / Instagram)
Roberson told Grice that she was studying to be an actress when she joined the group and didn’t intend to become a singer. After leaving the group, the 42-year-old said she didn’t pursue a solo singing career because it wasn’t her dream. Roberson also said it was challenging to watch Destiny’s Child go on without her, and after Grice asked what gave her comfort, she revealed that “alcohol” and “drugs” gave her solace as she coped.
“Alcohol, drugs, um, being in my own space,” she confessed. “Being in my own space. Um, exclude myself from society. Self-sabotage, that’s where I was. People wonder, like ‘Well what happened to you for like 20 years.’ I was underneath my own rock.”
“I can’t imagine that,” replied Grice. “I’ll never be able to, ’cause to be a founding member and to then you have to just watch it happen without you. I … it’s, it’s crazy.”
“Yeah,” she continued. “So I didn’t watch it happen. I sat in my house, and I watched the back of my eyelids on my own time, by myself, and it was one of the most horrible times of my life that lasted, um, maybe a little longer, but definitely a decade. Yeah, I was, yeah, I was no good to anybody around me or to myself at all.”
Roberson added that she was “in and out of jail,” to the surprise of Grice. “What didn’t I go to jail for?”
After Grice asked for a crazy prison story, Roberson said she was nearly jumped after the other inmates realized who she was.
“I don’t know what’s so crazy — me being in there or when they finally realized who I was, when I was in there my third, my third time that I was in there, oh they were talking about ‘oh yeah we done heard that girl from Destiny’s Child and we going to whup her ass.’ We wearing the same clothes. I ain’t got on Balenciaga.”
“They was like, ‘You do rich people’s drugs.’ I was like, I was like, ‘What is rich people’s drugs?’ They were like, ‘You snort coke, don’t you?'”
Roberson added that the last 20 years have been trying for her, and being able to tell her story helped her to be able to discuss it without crying.
“It’s a part of my Destiny, honey,” she said, adding that God wouldn’t give her more than she could handle. Roberson also said that she should have died at least three times due to her lifestyle.
“There are several times that I feel like at least three times, I probably should have been dead,” she said. “Like there have been some trying times, and it was me like God said, ‘I’m not done with you. I’m not done with you. When it’s going to be your time. It’s going to be your time. It’s not going to be what everybody thinks.'”
Roberson also spoke about being dismissed from the group during an interview with People magazine in 2016 and said she went into a depression. She also said that leaving the group was “like a bad divorce — you’re no longer with your friends, people that you love so much.”
Roberson eventually ended up in a better place. In 2014, she was cast in R&B Divas, followed by film, TV, and theater appearances soon after. Roberson reunited with Beyoncé in 2018, and she recently joined former Destiny’s Child member LeToya Luckett to support the “Halo” singer during her Renaissance Tour concert in Houston last September. The former Destiny’s Child also said she made peace with her replacements, Williams and Franklin. “There’s been nothing but love.”
The 42-year-old mother of two also has her own makeup collection with Bouji Lip Cosmetics. She took to Instagram to thank Grice for allowing her on his show.
“I owe little LaTavia everything. Healing is a process & I’m so blessed that GOD didn’t give up on me,” she wrote.
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