The Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kandi Burruss and her group members from Xscape have had their ups and downs over the years, but when it comes to preserving their legacy, they banned together. They reunited after nearly 20 years of estrangement in 2017, and Burruss says it was because she learned producer Carlos King sold a movie about the group’s life. She recently explained how she learned of the biopic.
How Kandi Burruss says she learned Carlos King sold a biopic about her group Xscape
Burruss worked alongside King when he worked as a producer on RHOA until his exit in 2009. She considered them to be friends, with King even renting office space in a building she owned in Atlanta. Her husband, Todd Tucker, and King went into business together, and while their business relationship didn’t last, she and King remained friendly.
But things went south when Burruss says she discovered King sold a movie about her group’s life story as a television film without her knowledge or consent. In an interview with The Shade Room, she detailed how she learned of the news, explaining:
A friend of mine is a producer or director, me and [my husband] Todd were talking to him, and I said, ‘It would be dope if Xscape had a movie about our lives.’ And our friend was like, ‘Oh, they’re already doing that movie.’ We were like, ‘What you mean? Who’s already doing the movie?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, I just took a meeting about that.’ He told me the network or whatever, so I called my agent, and I asked what was going on. He looked into it and found out that it was true that the network was doing it. It took us a couple more weeks to find out who had put it all together. Come to find out, it was Carlos who was supposed to be a producer, director, or whatever of the movie. Right before I found out it was him, one of his producers that he works with reached out to my mom and was like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re trying to do a documentary about girl groups and we wanted to get some information…’ to interview my mom. So you’re going to do all of that, and you don’t even tell me?
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The ‘RHOA’ star had a meeting with the network that resulted in the biopic being shelved
Burruss was furious about the ordeal, but she tried to contact King to get answers. She says he ignored her phone call, so she went above him and got in contact with the network executives to have a meeting regarding the unauthorized project.
“At first, when I called him, he didn’t answer my call. And then when Tiny and I, we went and had a meeting with the network — much love to Cathy Hughes, who is over TV One. Because as soon as she found out about it, she shut it down,” she sais. “She was like, ‘As a Black woman, I don’t want other Black women to be taken advantage of.’ So at that point, when it started being a problem, then he reached out to me. I didn’t answer his call at that point. Because I’m like, ‘He didn’t answer my call when I called him.’
She says it wouldn’t have been an issue working with Carlos King if he’d asked prior
Ironically, Burruss says the fallout between her and King could have been avoided had they had a conversation. “To me, if he would have reached out in the beginning, before selling it, if he had reached out, it would have been a conversation. It would have been an, ‘OK, let’s see how this can work, or whatever.’ It wouldn’t have been a, ‘Get out of my face,’” she added.
Burruss says she felt betrayed, especially because she gave King his first job as an executive producer for her wedding special RHOA spinoff. The two have not spoken since the incident in 2016.
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