Interview: Gloria Govan Explains Why She Skipped The Basketball Wives Reunion

Plenty was said about Gloria Govan during the Basketball Wives reunion, and now the absent cast member gets her say. If you wondered why Gloria didn’t make it to the reunion, she tells all in the interview below. In it, she also talks about why she didn’t care to defend herself against whatever her castmates had to say, severing ties with Shaunie, defending her sister and why she doesn’t want to appear in the show’s second season, but may anyway.

Why didn’t you attend the Basketball Wives reunion?

It just wasn’t something that was conducive to our schedules. You know, Matt was in the playoffs and I wasn’t going to fly across the country to hang out with people I’m not particularly proud of probably being associated with. I told producers that if they moved it to Orlando or Miami I would be more than happy to be there. I’m sure without me being there, there wasn’t anybody to pick on.

I also wondered if you were making a statement like, “We’ll see how this goes without me…”

I kind of heard it was a mess. That wasn’t exactly my intention, to be like, “Ha, check this out! It’s going to be a disaster without me.” It wasn’t worth me going out there. I am not interested on being on Season 2, so that was another reason. It would’ve been a mess really, because I would’ve gone out there and had a lot more to say. I didn’t watch the series. I didn’t watch Basketball Wives, but from what I heard and the little bits and parts I did see, which was probably a total of 15 minutes of all the episodes, I just wasn’t proud of it. I wouldn’t say I regret it 100 percent, but I was surprised and disappointed in how they edited the series and how they portrayed the women.

It wasn’t scary that you wouldn’t be able to defend yourself against whatever they said about you at the reunion?

Not necessarily. I think people are going to make up their minds regardless if I was there or not. I think being there would have opened up the flood ates to allow people to nitpick at what I have going on and ask me more detailed questions that I’m not willing to answer. I know people are going to talk about me whether I’m there or not. Had I liked to defend myself? Yeah, probably, but it probably would’ve gotten ugly. Not physical, but definitely ugly.

What would you say to somebody that said you were being cowardly by avoiding the show?

I would laugh. I just kind of that’s funny. I’m definitely by no means scared of any of these girls. If the reunion were held closer to me, especially while Matt was in the playoffs, I probably would’ve attended, but going across country and missing one of Matt’s games…it wasn’t that important to me.

Was there any concern about the contractual obligation of attending? Or were you just like, “Whatever,” to that?

Yeah, I was kind of whatever, because I’m kind of whatever to the second season. At this point, none of that really bothers me with the contractual obligations. So it didn’t really affect my decision whether I had to go or not. I think I’m just kind of over it. I’ve done Season 1. Again, I’m not particular proud of how it came off, but I do think I was real. I portrayed myself as real as I could while the cameras were shooting. What they do with the film after the cameras were off I have no control over. I don’t think I gave them a lot of opportunities to make me look stupid.

It’s interesting that you have beef with the editing because I didn’t get the sense that the editing was unjust to you. You didn’t give them opportunities to make you look stupid, sure, but also, you didn’t look stupid, period.

I think I’m my biggest critic, so the few parts I did see I wasn’t particularly happy about. I know the real things I said about the situations, about Royce, about Suzie, about Evelyn, about all the women and to see that cut down, or edited or nitpicked was a little frustrating. Again, I haven’t seen the whole series, but I’m just not happy with the overall production. I just don’t think it portrayed what I wanted to represent.

It must take restraint to not watch the entire show. I would be scared if I were you, cutting myself off from what everybody else can see.

Not really, because you’ve been there, you’ve done that so you’ve lived what people are watching. You know what went on. To see it cut down, edited, mixed up is kind of frustrating because it’s like, “Wait a minute, that’s not what I said. That’s not how that happened.” Matt and I both agreed not to watch it when he was in season, because a lot of distractions and unnecessary quarrels would’ve been brought up. I know that he needed to concentrate and I respected that he just felt like it wasn’t necessary to watch until the end of the season.

What do you think of the stuff Matt said to the women on the show via Twitter?

I think he has gone back and forth with them. I don’t have a Twitter account that I have used in a long time. I don’t follow them, they don’t follow me so it would’ve been pointless to get involved. Mainly, I told Matt don’t waste his time. They’re just unnecessary. They’re not a factor in our lives, to entertain ignorance belittles you and brings you down to their level. Part of me was proud of him, though. I was kind of excited. I was glad that he stood up to them. He protected me in a sense. I was excited for that, but I also told him it was probably a waste of time.

Did you agree with him that Jennifer and Evelyn were Shaunie’s puppets and they’re all tricks?

I would agree with the puppets statement. I definitely think these women are highly and heavily influenced by Shaunie, sometimes for the negative. I feel like Shaunie is the new Simon. Its kind of like, “Shaunie says we should do this,” “Shaunie says we should do that.” It was kind of like, wow, these women are grown women and supposed entrepreneurs. You would think they would be able to make up their own minds and establish avenues with their own judgments. At what point to do you say, “Hey listen, regardless of what Shaunie says, I don’t like Gloria or I like Royce for me, not because someone is telling me to do this”?

Are you on good terms with anybody at this point?

Surprisingly, I’m on good terms with Suzie. Suzie and I have BBMed each other throughout the series. A lot of the stuff that was said or portrayed on the show, we’ve actually apologized to each other about. There have been some times when Suzie has BBMed me and been down in the dumps about some of the episodes she was worried about. I tried to encourage her and just let her know that this is a small chapter in our lives and we shouldn’t allow it to make us sleep-deprived or anxious.

Are ties completely severed with Shaunie?

I think so. I don’t think I have aimed any of my comments at Shaunie in a negative light. From what I’ve heard, she had tried to say things about me or about Matt or about our relationship in general that just aren’t nice. I just think it’s also very immature. For someone to be grown with five kids, I feel like she should have better things to do with her time.

There were a few finer points mentioned during the reunion taping that I just wanted to touch briefly. I think Royce felt like you swindled her. She felt like you had created this bonds that included play dates and cake-tasting, stuff beyond normal association, stuff that went into the friendship realm.

I think she took some of the things that the producers were trying to do with her and I and interpreted them as my idea. Play dates and cake-tasting were suggestions that the producers had brought to my attention because Royce and I were the only ones with young kids on the show. Then when they realized Royce can’t bring her son on the show and she can’t talk about Dwight, then things started to change. Not that I was opposed to these things because in the beginning I didn’t know Royce. I didn’t mind at first, but then after having talked to Matt and stepping back a little bit, it wasn’t a good look. I told Royce, “I don’t mind being cordial to you, but at the end of the day I have to worry about my family, Matt’s teams camaraderie, his team’s friendships and stuff like that. I’m not going jeopardize his opportunity to get a championship ring, to come back next year for you.” I was just kind of explaining to her, “If you understand where I’m going from, great, then we can have a mutual respect for one another and it wouldn’t go past that.”

At one point you called Royce “backstabbing,” but I didn’t see any evidence of her backstabbing on the show.

That might’ve been more behind the scenes. Royce and I had a conversation after the pool party. She texted me and was just like, “Hey, I feel like I can’t trust anybody on the show, you might be the only person that’s just been real so can I call you?” So we talked. I’d given her my two cents about the girls: I didn’t particularly trust them, especially since Suzie was so new to the cast. I told Royce I’d heard some interesting things about Suzie. I felt like at the time that she wasn’t a fabulous mother. I was just expressing my feelings as she was to me. Then she went back to Suzie: “Oh by the way, Gloria said this, this, and this to me.”

Someone did allege that you have nannies and you were hypocritical for calling Suzie out on that.

I don’t have a nanny. I don’t have babysitters, not on a 9-5 basis, just if we’re doing a date night or an adult function. Matt’s best friend, Jeff, lives with us. He helps out but I don’t have a nanny per se. We don’t pay him to watch the boys.

There was also talk that Royce had dislocated your shoulder during the boxing?

Oh no. My shoulder was dislocated a long time ago. I had shoulder surgery when I was a junior in high school and it pops out all the time.

Evelyn and Jennifer both contended that Royce won that fight. Was that how you experienced it?

I didn’t go in there trying to hurt Royce, but in the episode you can see her trying to get aggressive so that’s what kind of turned the tables. We’d only had gone two rounds. Maybe the third one would have really dictated who won. From what we fought, it was definitely even.

You said you weren’t particularly proud of your association with these women and I assume the show. Is it weird talking about it? Obviously you’ve done interviews, and you’re doing an interview right now, arguably extending your association with the show.

I don’t think so. People want to know and so I’m going to tell them who I am and how I feel. I’m definitely going to use the show as it used me. I’m not going to deny and there weren’t any pros to doing the show. It has opened up many doors for Matt and I: clothing lines, foundations, events. But after that, the show and how it portrayed women makes me regret it because I might have helped portray women in a negative light. I was involved in it and these women, in my opinion, were very trashy, were very immature, were a crying train wreck. I didn’t want people to view us as just a mess, or think that all we do is shop. I didn’t want people to think that we live in apartments and we shop for Ferraris —that kind of thing. The exact thing I didn’t want to represent I helped make. That’s what’s frustrating.

I thought Evelyn made a good point about blood ties during the so-called “last supper.” Do you think blood excuses everything? I understand where you’re coming from with your sister, especially when it comes to dealing with virtual strangers, but do you think that blood should excuse everything?

There are definitely moral lines that you draw. If a relative was driving drunk and hit somebody, that’s just obvious. If the evidence is there, you side with the evidence. But emails aren’t enough evidence for me. What’s funny is that Evelyn wouldn’t believe that anyone could have set up my sister, and yet she says she’s being stalked and someone broke into her emails, stole her pictures, and put them online. Her attitude was, “What makes your sister so special to have her email be hacked?” Well, here I am saying well what makes you so special? I think Evelyn of all people should have taken a minute to step back and say, “OK wait a minute, this is happening to me.” She should acknowledge that it’s possible. When I mentioned that at the dinner, she had absolutely nothing to say.

You avoided the reunion, but what is it going to be like when you run into these people?

Given Matt’s career and where their men are I don’t think we’ll cross paths just because I haven’t crossed paths with these women before. But maybe there [will be] a day when we are all in the same state. You know we might be at some event, but again, it’ll just be a, “Hey,” but nothing more. It won’t be a hug or a kiss. It’ll just be an acknowledgment and that’s it. I won’t go out of my way but I will keep it cordial and respectful. It’s just too much energy to be all negative and nasty.

Is there anything else outstanding that you feel like you have to clear up?

I’m not interested in doing Season 2. If you do see me on Season 2, it will be for the wedding which is max one or two episodes, but other than that, that’s kind of it. I wish these women all the best of luck. I’ve used the show for what it’s used me for and I’m done. Not to say I’m the star of the show, but could you imagine the show without me? Everyone would just be crying the whole time.

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