14 DAY TRIAL // Some days before the premiere of season 4 of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo on TLC, two of the biggest stars of the reality series, Honey Boo Boo and Mama June, appeared on Jimmy Fallon to tell viewers what they were to expect to see in the new episodes.
That was the first concrete sign of trouble, because the once bubbly, sassy but still cute kid Honey Boo Boo had clearly grown into a complete brat who had no patience for other people, and no manners to know to behave herself.
On the other hand, Mama June was shown as incompetent in terms of her ability to keep her 9-year-old daughter in check, because the years of letting her do and say whatever she wanted (and having all this awarded with attention) had taken a toll.
Honey Boo Boo is a brat, Mama June is insufferable
This is exactly how things were back at home too, Chickadee, Honey Boo Boo’s sister, reveals in a new interview with Entertainment Tonight, as the video below will confirm. Anna Cardwell (Chickadee) explains that she’s been raised by her maternal grandmother after her mother’s boyfriend molested her and was sent to prison.
To this day, Mama June doesn’t believe her. Perhaps worse is the fact that she’s reconnected with the pedophile, for which reason TLC pulled the plug on the reality show, which was supposed to air its fifth season as of January next year.
With no show, Chickadee is no longer bound by contract not to say what it was really like to be a part of it, and from what she’s saying, despite Mama June’s claims that they were as “real” as you and me, they really weren’t. Their reality show was just as scripted as any other airing right now on TV.
Alana (Honey Boo Boo’s real name) is a brat, Chickadee reveals. She liked the attention at first, so she would gladly pose for photos and sign autographs, but these days, whenever she doesn’t feel like doing anything, she just throws a tantrum. She’s “not nice,” Chickadee explains.
Mama June can’t control her in any way, even assuming she’d realize such behavior is not ok and she’d be willing to try. Mama June too had gotten tired of the reality show, Chickadee says.
The lie of reality television
According to the 20-year-old, she didn’t even live with the family at the time the show went into production. It is now a known fact that Chickadee was estranged to the family, but in this new interview, she says the only reason she moved back in is because she was told to.
TLC greenlighted Here Comes Honey Boo Boo off the success of Toddlers & Tiaras, which documented the lives of kiddie beauty pageant queens and their obsessed mothers. Honey Boo Boo and Mama June were included in a couple of episodes and became such a hit with viewers that the network deemed it a good idea if they got more exposure, with their own show.
They couldn’t have Chickadee live at another house because she’d been molested when she was 8 by her mother’s pedophile boyfriend, so she attempted a cover-up: so Mama June told Chickadee she would buy her and her boyfriend a house if she agreed to move back in for the show for 1 year.
“I was like, okay, that’s fine, and it ended up being two and a half years,” Chickadee says with what sounds like a definite note of regret in her voice.
Chickadee is also breaking her silence on the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend, making it clear in previous interviews that she blames Mama June for it. She also thinks Mama June is a disgrace of a mother for bringing the man back into her life – and into the lives of her 3 minor girls now living with her.