Shaunie O’Neal Promises Next Season of ‘Basketball Wives’ Will Be Emotional

By: Taren Vaughan

Shaunie O’Neal talks about Basketball Wives season five and what viewers can expect to see throughout the upcoming season in recent interview. “Basketball Wives” has seen much success in the reality TV world as the show has continued to bring in high ratings with each season. However, cast members of the show have caught some serious backlash over their violent antics. In an attempt to change the way people view them, changes were made to the casting line-up, which resulted in Jennifer Williams, Kesha Nichols and Royce Reed getting the axe. In a recent interview they did together, Shaunie, Evelyn and Tami explained how the upcoming season of BBW would be nothing like the past seasons have been as the focus will be on the positive aspects of their lives.

TheGrio caught up with Shaunie at the Essence Music Festival and during their interview with the reality TV star, Shaunie goes into more detail about her experience filming for the new season for “Basketball Wives” and says viewers will see a lot of growth from the cast members:

“You’ll see a lot of growth. Just filming this season I felt the growth. Sometimes I’d look at the ladies and be like ‘I’m so proud of you. You handled that so well.’ This is like a mirror. We’ve been able to look at ourselves for four seasons, and now going into the fifth, it’s like ‘I gotta do better.’

“I’m a mom of two girls. And my daughters see me… I never want to show them anything that I wouldn’t want them to represent as a black woman. I can’t control what everyone else does, I can’t control anybody else’s behavior, but I can control mine.”

Shaunie also talks about how hard it was for her to watch Evelyn get emotional over the domestic violence incident that happened with Chad:

“It was rough. It’s a whole lot of crying. I tease her now when we talk, like, ‘I stopped counting how many times you cried this season, and how many times you made me almost cry.’ A lot of it was us hearing some things for the first time. She let’s go a lot on the show, because it was so new when we were filming. It’s very emotional… it’s extremely emotional.”