Kandi Burruss is a Strong Black Woman
March 6, 2011 No Comments
From death to despair, Kandi Burruss could have easily given up.
With her casting on the “Real Housewives of Atlanta” and some new momentum behind her career, it looked like nothing but peaches and cream for the former Xcape star. She was on TV. She was back in the studio. She was in love.
But street violence hit the small screen with the death of Burruss’s fiance Ashley “A.J.” Jewell at an Atlanta strip club.
A.J. reportedly died after being bashed in the head with a bottle outside a club he was buying. A club employee is being held by police.
With all the sad news, how could Kandi go on?
Her first season on the show, Kandi didn’t quite fit in — in a refreshing way — with the housewife stereotype. Sure, she had the money, and even the fame, but she lacked the obnoxious attitude, the materialistic selfishness that made co-stars like NeNe Leakes and Sheree Whitfield such gossip magnets.
She wasn’t exactly good TV.
Like DeShawn Snow, Kandi was a regular chick. She did however have the drama in her life, most of it emanating from her courtship of A.J., the father of six children.
Her mother was deadset against the wedding, and now it will never be.
What people don’t know is that Kandi also had just lost a loved one, a dear uncle, a week ago, and was already going through a tough time.
Word is that the Bravo people were scrambling with how to deal with A.J.’s death, especially since the reunion show was set to tape the following week.
Should they cut him out of the upcoming episodes? Should they re-edit them to reflect his death? Those were questions the TV execs and producers were grappling with.
But the question really wasn’t what would the show do. It was what would Kandi do?
Kandi was a sympathetic character, especially with her disagreements with NeNe coming to a head now.
Somehow the other “Housewives” franchises — in New York and Orange County, etc. — had managed to avoid real-life street tragedy, although sickness did manifest itself
but in Atlanta, it came to fruition. Of all places, Atlanta.
But Kandi has risen from the dark times and, with new music and the launch of Tags and her web series Kandi Coated Nights, girlfriend is doing alright.
Everything, again, is peaches and cream.
