When the going gets tough, some people — think former “Rehab Addict” coach Nicole Curtis — just keep digging.
Sometimes, um, fart digging?
“Fart digger” is what Curtis told “The Breakfast Club” she was trying to say in a two-year-old video that surfaced of her using the N-word and immediately asking her cameraman to kill the footage. Or maybe it was “fart knocker.” She said those are both phrases she uses in her work and she got them tangled up while the camera was running.
Mind you, Curtis wrote on Instagram after the show that “Everyone advised against this, to be honest. 
no one thought this was a good idea for me.” And based on how her time on “The Breakfast Club” went, everyone was not wrong.
Curtis’ show and its two spinoffs were removed “from all HGTV platforms,” the network said, after that video came to light a month ago. “Rehab Addict” was produced for eight full seasons from 2010 to 2018 and was in the midst of an apparently shortened ninth season spread over two years when it was pulled. At the time, Curtis apologized to fans on social media and thanked them for their support.
Cutting back to Tuesday on the radio, DJ Envy asked her, “What’s up with you and farts?” as Curtis mentioned using “fart digger” and “fart knocker” as HGTV-palatable cuss words.
“Do you have boys in here? … Boys talk about farts all the time,” Curtis said. “OK, so, again, I can’t swear on my show. OK, so yes, I have made up these crazy words.”
“If you said ‘fart digger’ the amount of times that you said, I just feel like you should have released that a million and one times,” DJ Envy said, “because it just seems like it’s something that you’ve said before because it just came out so nice.”
Then he and Charlamagne tha God started poking at Curtis verbally, saying that “fart digger” made it sound like she was playing around all day with a certain body part that, like opinions, everybody has. “That’s a little nasty,” one of them said.
Curtis seemed to tense up amid the smooth onslaught.
“I don’t have a rhyme or reason for the words I make up,” she said. “Like, I say nonsense stuff all the time. … I’ll edit my shows and I’ll be like, ‘F—, just finish what the f— you’re saying,’ ‘cause I got off on this and that and I’m off the cuff. I’m not scripted.”
“So were you trying to say something else in that moment?” Charlamagne asked.
“Absolutely!” Curtis replied.
“‘Cause you say ‘fart digger’ and ‘fart knocker’ together?” Jess Hilarious said. “What I can say is, I understand you …”
“No you don’t,” Charlamagne said, cutting her off.
“Let me finish,” Jess said before using the N-word herself, which set off light laughter and a burst of cross-talk around the table.
“I’m just in the middle here, again, see,” Curtis said to nobody in particular, pressing her palms together above her head.
Jess said she understood why Curtis said she apologized to her kids first, “because some of them are in school … and they may have Black friends and for them to see their friend’s mom use the term … they could be bullied for that. They could have to pay that price.”
Curtis, who is a mother of two sons, ages 28 and 10, said she apologized to them because, well, they “live in Detroit. … I don’t even know, can I say I am in the ‘hood?”
“So your best friends are Black and you live in the ‘hood. I want you to live your truth,” Charlamagne said as Curtis insisted, “I live in Detroit. I’m a Detroiter.”
“So, I’m trying to figure this out,” Charlamagne continued. “Hold on. What are you — what are you trying to prove here when you keep saying you’re from Detroit and you’re around rappers and your best friends are Black and — what are you saying?”
Loren LoRosa chimed in, telling self-proclaimed historic preservation expert Curtis, “I think it’s a learning moment for you because we don’t have the privilege to not understand what we’re saying, why we’re saying it. So, even in this moment, you may not mean anything by saying, ‘I live in Detroit.’ But even if you didn’t get caught saying the N-word on this video, it still would come off as very privileged and very unbalanced because it’s different for us and that’s what we’re trying to have a conversation here.”
Then Charlamagne asked Curtis if she thought privilege makes people think they can “say anything.” Curtis said yes and started talking about “the R-word,” which prompted Charlamagne to ask, “What is this R-word you keep referring to?”
Amid the chatter, Jess Hilarious finally spoke the R-word out loud, so the conversation could move ahead.
“Like saying ‘fart n—,’” Charlamagne said, “and then coming to a Black radio show and trying to explain yourself about it. That …”
”… is r—,” DJ Envy said, finishing the thought.
“You know what?” Curtis said. “You know what? You’re right. You’re right. You’re right. I came here — I came here to have a open conversation and I didn’t have to.”
Things didn’t end there. Charlamagne kept poking, Curtis kept talking and a couple of heads simply exploded, the “Rehab Addict” host’s among them.
In that Instagram post that went up after the show, which included a photo of Curtis with LoRosa snapped by Jess Hilarious, the HGTV castoff explained that “everyone” had advised her against coming to the show, but she “reached out and asked if they would have the conversation.”
“Here’s what happens in life when we stay in our own echo chambers — we stay stuck,” she continued. “Thank you to Loren for answering my call. I realize they are getting heat for giving me time from their followers, I think it’s time we all got out of our comfort zones and have these conversations.
“Thank[s] to Jess — this pic is, seriously, 2 moms chatting about life, kids, struggles. God Bless.”
The post Nicole Curtis of ‘Rehab Addict’ can’t stop fart-digging her way through a ‘Breakfast Club’ chat appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
