Tamar Braxton Was Suicidal While Filming Her Revealing Docuseries ‘Get Ya Life!’: ‘I Already Felt Dead’
Tamar Braxton has been a television personality for years and has captured the hearts of many for her over-the-top persona and hilarious catchphrases. The Grammy-nominated singer has also had her own share of public drama over the past few years, and 2020 has been no different.
Tamar Braxton has had a rough 2020
Three years ago, Braxton ended her marriage to Vincent Herbert after nine years together; since then, she’s been her son Logan’s primary caretaker. She began dating Nigerian businessman David Adefeso in 2018.
Braxton’s struggles are often in the public eye, and sometimes play out on her family’s long-running reality show Braxton Family Values. Braxton’s most heartbreaking struggle one to date came in July of 2020.
Braxton attempted suicide and was found unconscious in a Los Angeles hotel room. She had already filmed a revealing docuseries, Tamar Braxton: Get Ya Life!, that was set to premiere on July 30, but the release was pushed until September as Braxton spent time recovering.
She opened up about her experiences for the first time in an interview with Tamron Hall. “I was lying about how amazing I was doing. And I allowed the makeup and the hair to cover up everything that I was feeling,” Braxton said honestly. “Our household became very hard, and it was hard because I wasn’t happy [doing Braxton Family Values], and I hadn’t been happy for years.”
Tamar Braxton didn’t want to continue doing TV
Braxton said that her relationship with WE TV was a contributing factor in the situation. She even admitted that she didn’t want to do another reality show, and they used her contract to leverage her time and have her continue working.
“I didn’t want to do the spinoff Get Ya Life!,” she said. “It was presented to me that this is basically the only way to do another show that I really was excited about doing and it was positive and it was more me.” She agreed because she wanted to give fans a behind-the-scenes look at her one-woman show, going on tour, and talking about her life after her divorce.
Hall asked her if this was what led her to want to kill herself. “I already felt dead,” she replied. “I felt choked.”
“It was about feeling like I could never be myself, and being misunderstood, and having the stigma of the angry Black woman all the time,” she added. “And that’s not who I am. That’s not what I wanted to portray.”
Tamar Braxton’s family traumatized her on ‘Braxton Family Values’
Another reason Braxton was overwhelmed with everything in her life was the infamous confrontation on Braxton Family Values with self-help guru Iyanla Vanzant. Vanzant was brought in to help the family settle their differences, but it ended with her abruptly leaving the set.
“I was excited about it,” Braxton recalled. “But that excitement came to an end when she decided to tell everyone that I was domestically sexually abused from the ages of 6 to 16, and I’d never told anyone that.”
That betrayal ate away at Braxton for months, and she eventually sent the network and her family a letter saying she wanted to kill herself. No one took her seriously, and she was given a call sheet to show up to film the show as she normally would.
She was served with a letter saying she had breached her contract and that they were stopping her payments and stopping her from doing any other TV work.
“I love television. And I wanted to do other positive television,” Braxton said. “I just didn’t want to be that person anymore. It was killing me, literally.” She regretted that Braxton Family Values had devolved into “being devilish” rather than highlight the talents of all of the family’s members.
Braxton tried to sort out her issues with everyone in family therapy, but things took a turn for the worse. “We went for counseling, and I wasn’t helped; I was humiliated,” she said. “We just simply wasn’t a family anymore, and that helped turn it into a nightmare for me.”
If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). There is also a crisis text line. For crisis support in Spanish, call 1-888-628-9454.
