After more than three weeks of competition, Tamar Braxton has been crowned the winner of “Celebrity Big Brother” season 2. And while taking home the grand prize is great, the singer also won the gift of friendship with Kandi Burruss.
The two singers explained during one of the first “Celebrity BB” episodes that one of the most recent incidents that tore them further apart came on New Year’s Eve 2017.
“Everybody, of course, was letting special guests come in that night,” Burruss said of Braxton wanting to invite Khia and Ts Madison on stage while she opened for Xscape on tour. “And [Tamar] invited someone to come onstage who had basically said a lot of negative things about myself and some other members of our group and also people that we are close to.”
Braxton surmised Burruss simply “ain’t never really liked me like that.”
But by the time the competition was over, the singers had turned over a new leaf.
“We got it back because we wanted it. We wanted to make amends more than we wanted to fight, and that’s for the both of us,” Braxton told Entertainment Weekly Feb. 13. “I just think that’s a testament to life. When you want to get along, when you want to do something, and it’s another person involved, they’ve got to want it too. You’ve got to work at it. And we constantly worked at our relationship in the house. I wasn’t too happy to see her face, I’m not going to lie, when I first saw her. But, in the end, I’m really grateful that she was there. And I’m really grateful of the friendship that we’ve been able to have in the house and outside of the house.”
And doing so was especially touching to Burruss. She was eliminated first during the two-hour season finale Wednesday and told host Julie Chen the healing was a long time coming.
“Y’all don’t know we needed this!” Burruss exclaims. “We really did. … We’ve known each other over 20 years, but we’ve never been like this [gestures closeness with her hands]. And that’s crazy to know somebody that long and you can’t really depend on each other. So, that first week I was like, ‘Oh, this is about to be terrible!’ But then, some kinda way we turned it around and we really supported each other, and I’m so thankful for it.”
Fans were equally as thrilled about the stars patching up their decades-long feud.
“So happy for them.”
“❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ Black women being positive and supporting each other.”
“So touching!”
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt2PpfWg21L/