Shaunie O’Neal Says Jackie Didn’t Want Ta’Kari Back on BBW + Talks Drama with Malaysia & Brandi

In a recent interview with VH1, Shaunie O’Neal opened up about the latest and very chaotic season of “Basketball Wives.”

A lot of drama revolved around Jackie Christie and Evelyn Lozada’s fallout, which of course involved Jackie’s strained relationship with her daughter Ta’Kari Lee.

Jackie spent the majority of the season denying the accusations Ta’Kari made about her parenting, and many viewers wondered if Ta’Kari would eventually come on the show to give her side to the story.

Shaunie told VH1 recently that Jackie would not allow Ta’Kari to come back on the show:

As a producer on the show, were you trying to get Ta’Kari on the show so it wasn’t just people talking about her?

Of course, absolutely, but I feel like Jackie has been a huge part of the [Basketball Wives] franchise for a very long time and I don’t want to betray her. And it sucks because she had so much to say about her daughter, and her daughter couldn’t defend herself but at the same time, she didn’t want that to happen and I was cool with respecting Jackie’s wishes to not have her daughter on the show. So, we didn’t even entertain that but we definitely threw it out there a couple times, like, “Hey, why don’t you let her have a voice?” but no.

She also addressed what went down with Brandi Maxiell and Malaysia Pargo:

So, explain to me what happened behind the scenes between Brandi and Malaysia and the process of making the show?

What Malaysia seems to think is that Evelyn, wholeheartedly, tried to get her fired and that’s not true. We were trying to take Basketball Wives down a different road, the word substance is thrown around so many times because that’s kind of where the discussion started. We’re all growing older, and wiser and learning from past mistakes because we have damn made many in front of everybody. We just like Malaysia and Brandi, although they’re sweet and I have no problem with them but the last couple of seasons have become about the wigs and the makeup or the smaller the clothes, or the least amount of clothes that can be worn.

I brought Malaysia onto the show and I personally have never had a get-to-know-you conversation. Like I know you’re a mom, and a wife, and now an ex-wife, and you’re trying to do some things but I don’t know anything about you. [The substance conversation] looked like an insult but it wasn’t supposed to be.

I just hope Malaysia knows it wasn’t an insult. This was about Basketball Wives–the reality show. This wasn’t about her as a woman in life, it’s just about making the show itself.

And she explained why things didn’t work out with all the Metoyer sisters:

What happened with the new girls on the cast? There were so many people this season. Brandi said on social media that the reason she and Malaysia came back because those other girls didn’t work.

Let’s be clear, that Brandi, out of everybody would be the last person to have any facts about this because I think she shot a handful of scenes the entire season. The only time I saw Brandi was that one time she popped up in Palm Springs but besides that I don’t know where should would get her information because I don’t think production was communicating with her.

So, the new girls did not work out. They had some drama going on before they got to Basketball Wives that was said, but not said. When we were doing the pre-casting we know there was some stuff going on but it didn’t seem as intense as it was once we started filming.

So, this season we started filming and we started with a new showrunner, new everything. Everything was new except for some of the OGs in the cast. Our new showrunner said let’s start this season off with all of the newbies sort of filming together, get them comfortable with filming and cameras around. So they kinda filmed a lot amongst themselves to get them acclimated to filming before they incorporated them in with us. By that time, it’s probably four or five weeks into filming, there was some stuff going on between them that was so intense that we didn’t understand what was going on with them. We couldn’t get through scenes without them getting into a full-blown argument about this “stuff” that was going on in their personal lives. It actually just became a distraction to filming the show.

Even when we got to a point that was like, let’s try and understand, and maybe we can try and fix this problem but it was so blown, it was like, “I don’t understand why you guys can’t talk to each other,” and “I don’t know why these sisters hate each other so much.” We don’t know what this sister brings to this whole problem. It was a mess. So, that’s where Brandi and Malaysia came in because we’re now five weeks in and these sisters have these external issues that are now coming on camera that don’t make any sense to us and we’re here so we knew it wouldn’t make sense to the viewers. So we were in desperation mode and we needed to bring some people in here that can jump in five weeks in and just go with the flow. So, that’s where Brandi and Malaysia came in. Brandi didn’t really work out but Malaysia ended up sticking around because we needed some cast so we got Malaysia, we got Hazel. Saniy’yah was supposed to just be a stylist but kind of intertwined herself by getting close to Jackie, and then Jenn, which I’ve been pushing for like two seasons now. I was so happy to make that happen.