Will the new cast of The Real Housewives of Atlanta live up to Kandi Burruss’ legacy?
Though the star, who exclusively spoke to OK! while promoting her partnership with weight-loss supplement Hydroxycut, left the show after 15 years, she revealed she will be watching Season 16 of the Bravo program.
“I’m excited about the other girls on the cast. I'm excited to see what they're going to do,” Burruss said of the new Housewives, who will be joining Kenya Moore and Drew Sidora for the upcoming season.
“I'm friends with Shamea, who's the new Housewife that's coming,” she noted of Shamea Morton Mwangi. “I'm excited that Porsha's coming back,” referencing Porsha Williams, who is returning to the show after a two-year hiatus.
“I'm tuning in, I'm gonna see what they're doing,” Burruss added.
The mother-of-four — who shares Riley Burruss, Kaela Tucker, Ace Tucker and Blaze Tucker with husband Todd Tucker — also explained her feelings on exiting the show, as it was such a huge part of her life.
“It was a really hard decision. You can’t do something for 15 years and just walk away and it not be hard,” Burruss said. “This year was my contract year and I finally got to make the decision for myself.”
Burruss added how she was tired of other cast members critiquing her for branching out in her career.
“I don't know if you remember last season, everybody always had an attitude with me because I was off doing shows or filming something else. But I have a dream to win an EGOT, so I have to do other things. If that was gonna be a problem going into the season, which I already knew it was going to be, I just wanted to go,” she explained.
The celeb shared that having projects in the works also made her feel good about her decision to leave the series.
“If I didn't have anything that was coming up, then I probably was like, 'I don't know.' But, because I knew I had a few things that were in the works, I was a little bit more confident to say, 'Okay,'” Burruss stated, referencing her acting career, her beauty line, Kandi Koated Cosmetics, and producing the Broadway production of Othello, starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal.
As for whether she is still in touch with her friends from RHOA, Burruss insisted she talks with Moore and Cynthia Bailey.
“I'm still a part of the family,” she said.
Elsewhere in the interview, Burruss shared how she lost a whopping 31 pounds in the last four months with the help of Hydroxcut. The Bravolebrity revealed that she started taking the weight-loss supplement in May after reaching her heaviest weight: 172 pounds.
“For the past year, I have tried all kinds of weight-loss stuff. I tried the trendy stuff. It did not work for me. And I just could not understand why, why, why, why was I not losing weight?” she recalled. “My friend Kenya, who you know, had done Hydroxycut before and she had lost a lot. She had slimmed down and was looking great.”
In addition to Hydroxycut, Burruss shared her secret to dropping the extra pounds.
“I would personally say it’s really about changing your eating habits because I'm a foodie. I like sweets. I like soda,” she said. “I cut out desserts, and then I cut out soda. I was only drinking water the entire time. So, I did not cheat. You have to remember, you gotta really stick to it.”
