13-05-2025
Alana 'Honey Boo Boo' Thompson Recalls Days They Had No Food amid Mom's Addiction to Crack Cocaine (Exclusive)
Alana "Honey Boo Boo" Thompson has been a fixture on reality TV ever since her days on Toddlers & Tiaras in 2011. The rambunctious spitfire won over the hearts of fans and snagged multiple spinoff shows featuring her family over the years. But what was her life really like behind the cameras? Alana, now 19, is finally ready to share her side of the story.
The former pageant princess' life is being explored in a new Lifetime biopic, I Was Honey Boo Boo, premiering May 17. Among one of the darkest moments that the film depicts is her mother 'Mama June' Shannon's downward spiral into toxic relationships and drug addiction.
'I did not want this movie to be throwing punches at my mama and making her out to be the bad guy,' Alana tells PEOPLE in this week's cover story. 'But I didn't hold back, and if she gets mad, at the end of the day it's the truth.'
As Mama June filmed her spinoff series, WeTV's Mama June: From Not to Hot, which first premiered in 2017, she fell into the throes of addiction to crack cocaine.
'I noticed something was off about her,' Alana says. 'She started locking her doors, which really made me think, 'Oh, what is she doing?'"
In 2019, Mama June and her then-boyfriend Geno Doak were charged with felony possession of drugs — just days after her family staged an intervention that was captured on Mama June: From Not to then began living with her older sister Lauryn 'Pumpkin' Efird after she told her mom during the intervention she had left "not by choice."
"I would love to come home and stay with you, tell you about my day, but I can't do that because I'm scared. I'm scared to stay at your house," Alana said in the 2019 episode.
Looking back now, Alana remembers "when Pumpkin came to get me [to live with her], there was no food. Basically, the house had been abandoned."
When Alana was 16, Pumpkin was granted full custody of her.
Alana recalls the period playing out so publicly on TV. 'People were like, 'I saw your mama on the news with a busted tooth, strung out,'' Alana recalls her classmates saying. 'I'm like, 'Great, like I didn't see that too.'"
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During the time Alana came under fire for pretending to snort cocaine on social media. 'It was really stupid, but I was young, and Mama wasn't really reaching out. I thought if I do this maybe she'll be like, 'I need to stop because Alana's taking after me.' It didn't work.'
As the show rebranded to Mama June: Road to Redemption and, later, Mama June: Family Crisis (which returns May 30), Alana recalls a time a producer 'pulled me aside to say, 'Your mama's not going to look like what you think. She's on drugs. You need to prepare yourself.''
Alana and her sisters confronted Mama June about her drug use, and 'she didn't lie,' Alana says. 'But it didn't matter that she fessed up, because she still wanted to do it.'
Though critics have accused the show of being exploitative for showing such events, 'I don't think it was,' says Alana. 'But at times I do feel like the camera should have went away.'
Now, she and her mom, who says she's five and a half years sober, have mended their relationship, though Alana says it was "hard."
"But at the end of the day, she's my mom. When she was bad in her addiction, I just kept thinking about the day she'd recover," she says. "We're going pretty good. Hopefully it lasts. I just no longer have any expectations for her."I Was Honey Boo Boo premieres Saturday, May 17 at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime.
Read the original article on People
