Charmaine Bey’s beef with Draya Penzo became controversial.
Charmaine Bey had a tough recent season on “Black Ink Crew Chicago.” She clashed with people as she attempted to get 2nd City Ink back on track. Miss Kitty, Draya Penzo, and Prince Spencer all took issue with the decisions Charmaine was making. Kitty also offered to help out more because she knew Charmaine was pregnant and dealing with her father’s battle with cancer. However, Charmaine said she didn’t want anyone else to make hiring and firing decisions. And eventually, she fired Kitty and Prince. Draya walked away on her own.
Interestingly enough, her situation with Draya is why she decided to quit the show. According to Charmaine, she really had an issue with Draya accusing her of colorism.
She made the revelation on Carlos King’s new podcast, “Reality with The King.”
Charmaine said, “There was a situation where I didn’t want this girl to work at my shop because she was sleeping with my friend’s boyfriend. The boyfriend worked at my shop as well. Next thing I know…that’s why I didn’t want her working there…next thing I know, there is a colorism storyline. She’s brown-skinned. At the convention…we went to a tattoo convention, at the convention she came to the convention screaming, hollering, and pointing, ‘Rah, rah, rah!'”
The colorism accusation was the last straw.
She continued, “So I said, ‘Look, girl, if you wanna act all ghetto fabulous, you can do that elsewhere. But don’t do it in front of my booth at the convention.’ They edited out, took out her acting all crazy, put in the parts when she’s acting all calm and talking all normal. But they kept me saying, ‘If you wanna act all ghetto fabulous…'”
And the green screen interview was tough to watch, “Mind you, I’m light-skinned. She’s a brown girl. Next thing I know, she’s having a scene, crying about protecting black women. I’m not in that scene.”
Charmaine claimed that she didn’t receive a heads up about Draya’s accusation.
“I had no idea until I was watching it on TV with the rest of the world. She’s crying about protecting black women and then she does an interview. And I know what a network interview looks like versus what something that may come out of my mouth naturally. It was a network interview bite when she was explaining what colorism is. And that was the…no matter how hard it is to film and how hard it is to get through it…and the things edited, it’s like okay this is a part of my job. I signed up for this.”
She added, “But that is when I knew I was in a very dangerous situation with Viacom.”
Charmaine said it was very hurtful.
“For me, I’m pregnant, my father just died of cancer, I just lost my mom, I was pregnant when I lost my mom. I’m like, ‘Why are y’all doing this to me? We didn’t have to do this.’ This was so uncalled for. That’s just when I felt like all money is not good money.”
She also said that when producers approached her about wanting to hire artists to “work” in her shop for filming purposes, Charmaine advocated for a brown-skinned woman. So Charmaine really couldn’t believe it when Draya accused her of being a colorist.
She wanted more sides of her to be shown, “People are telling me left and right what I on did, I’m a h*e, now I’m a bad business owner. However, VH1 never played my multimillion-dollar business Bey Moss. They were not interested in playing that. They’re only showing me being a ‘bad business owner’ in the tattoo space. So now I’m a bad business owner in general.”
When it comes to Ryan Henry, Charmaine said they have made peace despite her blasting him on social media recently. She believes Ryan was upset after he learned that she received producer credits for the latest season. He used to be the only cast member to have that opportunity. And he also allegedly was not happy that one of his scenes was cut out for Charmaine’s.
They hashed everything out. And the love is still there.
You can listen to the podcast in full.
That’s the thing about reality shows. Producers and networks don’t care about any of the people who sign up to be on the cast. They only care about ratings so they will ruin lives and exploit these people like it’s nothing. Then these people are fired or leave on their own after their image has been so damaged. Charmaine is fortunate that she has a radio career and successful businesses so financially she could afford to leave before it got worse. I do hope the other cast members know that eventually they too will be the bad guy because hey…ratings, right?
Colorism is way too serious for these reality stars and networks to be using it for storylines. I’m honestly tired of it. And it turns me off from watching the show.
The colorism sh-t was definitely a reach.