Current BET Presents: The Encore star Shamari DeVoe appeared on The Real Housewives of Atlanta as a Season 11 peach holder. It would be her first and last season. Despite being a fan favorite, DeVoe says she stepped away for “personal reasons.”
It looks like those “personal reasons” were due to issues with editing. She says she didn’t like the way she portrayed on the show during certain episodes. DeVoe was open about past marital troubles, including entering into an open marriage at some point with her longtime spouse Ronnie DeVoe. She also was a new mom to twin boys at the time and took advantage of time with the ladies to have a few libations – sometimes getting a little too tipsy. DeVoe says when the editing came back, she couldn’t believe what she saw.
“But they wanted to show me with my lil wine and make it seem like I’m just this drunk or whatever,” she tells The Jasmine Brand in a recent interview. “But that’s not me–there’s a balance. Like they didn’t show the fact that I was doing the Married 4 Life Walk, that I was helping people come together, and the thing about [me drinking on camera is] I hadn’t drank in like 2 years because I was pregnant with the boys, I was breastfeeding. When I got on [RHOA] they [were] just shoving drinks at [me] left and right… So I’m like ‘Okay cool, I can finally get away from the twins’…[The drinks] went straight to the head.”
DeVoe says she holds no ill will. “But I love all of the ladies on the show, and I love them and I wish them well,” she says, despite having drama with Marlo Hampton during her stint on the show. “And I’m not saying I would never go back to [RHOA] or anything like that, but it just has to be right for me and my family… [The editing] got to the point where my mother was saying ‘Shamari, [why] are you drinking so much? Are you an alcoholic?’”
“I would love [a family show],” she says. “I would do that. Like I would sign a contract today. I would do that–I already have the name. It’s called DeVoeted. It’s going down–like seriously, I would do that in a heartbeat. I’m so big on family–I love my family, and I want the world to see the ups and downs in marriages and how difficult it is raising toddlers when you’re a geriatric mom and a geriatric dad. My husband is 53, [and] he doesn’t have any other kids–these are his first kids. So it’s like ‘Man, your energy isn’t all of that.’ It’s hilarious. If y’all was a fly on the wall in our house, y’all would be cracking up laughing at everything that happens in here.”
