Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson admitted she is worried about what her mother, “Mama June” Shannon, will think of her upcoming Lifetime biopic.
“I’m a little nervous,” the 19-year-old told People on Tuesday about the May 17 release of “I was Honey Boo Boo,” in which she opens up about what she and her sisters endured as they witnessed their mom spiral into drug addiction.
“I did not want this movie to be throwing punches at my mama and making her out to be the bad guy,” she explained. “But I didn’t hold back, and if she gets mad, at the end of the day, it’s the truth.”
Following her rise to fame on TLC’s “Toddlers & Tiaras” as a young beauty queen, Thompson became the star of her own show, “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” in 2012.
However, what was meant to be a light-hearted series quickly became something more serious when Shannon, now 45, became addicted to crack cocaine.
“I noticed something was off about her,” Thompson remembered. “She started locking her doors, which really made me think, ‘Oh, what is she doing?’”
In 2019, Shannon and her boyfriend at the time, Eugene “Geno” Doak, were arrested and charged with felony possession of drugs.
“People were like, ‘I saw your mama on the news with a busted tooth, strung out,’” Thompson recalled to the magazine. “I’m like, ‘Great, like I didn’t see that too.’”
Shannon later admitted to spending more than $1 million at the height of her addiction, including $35,000 of Thompson’s pay from “Dancing With the Stars.
By 2022, Thompson’s sister Lauryn “Pumpkin” Efird, now 25, gained custody of Thompson and helped her graduate from high school. She is now a nursing student at Regis University in Denver.
“I just always told myself, you know, that you want to do something better with your life and bigger with your life than just being on TV, so you’ve got to get up and go, you’ve got to graduate so you can make it to college and be the nurse that you want to be,” she told People.
After Shannon returned Thompson’s money without an apology, the mother-daughter duo reconciled.
However, forgiving her mom — who is now five years sober and married to Justin Stroud — “was hard.”
“At the end of the day, she’s my mom,” Thompson noted. “When she was bad in her addiction, I just kept thinking about the day she’d recover.
“We’re going pretty good. Hopefully it lasts. I just no longer have any expectations for her.”
When asked about her past arrest and drug addictions, Shannon told People, “I don’t remember who that person was because I’ve worked so much on myself.”
In addition to Thompson and Efird, Shannon is a mom to Anna “Chickadee” Cardwell, who died of cancer in 2023 at age 29, and Jessica “Chubbs” Shannon, 28.
“I Was Honey Boo Boo” premieres May 17 at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime.
If you or someone you care about is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
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