“The Real Housewives of Atlanta” star Cynthia Bailey is getting real about one of the most uncomfortable moments across her 11 seasons as a main cast member. Bailey opened up about the season 7 moment in an interview for the Vice series “Dark Side of Reality TV”. “So this was one of the worst filming experiences of my life,” Bailey shared in a clip from the “Real Housewives” episode of the series, shared to the Vice YouTube channel on November 7.
“My castmate at the time, Phaedra Parks, she and her husband Apollo were going through all kind of craziness in their marriage,” Bailey explained. “Apollo was good friends with my husband Peter. Apollo told Peter that Phaedra was cheating on him with a guy named Mr. Chocolate. You can’t make this stuff up. And then of course the producers were like ‘You have to tell the girls.’ So I’m like, ‘Oh my god.’”
Cynthia Bailey Looks Back at Mr. Chocolate Confrontation
“I’m so stressed out about it. I don’t like it. I’m literally praying for a power outage, anything to happen so I don’t have to say this,” Bailey said of the dinner where she finally confronted Parks with the Mr. Chocolate rumor. “I’m getting texts on my phone, and people in the corner with the teleprompter, like ‘Drop the bomb, drop the bomb, drop the bomb. Bring up Mr. Chocolate.’”
After she dropped the bomb, Bailey confirmed that Parks, “was so pissed. I don’t like bringing bad news to people. I don’t like bringing hurtful things to people, but unfortunately on a reality show we have to talk about it and that’s just how it works.”
Parks opened up about the entire Mr. Chocolate storyline in a 2019 interview with BET, saying the producers “completely made up one story that I was dating an African prince the day Apollo went to prison. I was seeing some African man named Mr. Chocolate while I was breastfeeding my baby, going to mortuary school, my husband’s going to prison and I’ve got a 2-year-old.”
Parks maintained that she had not been cheating on her now-ex-husband, “But of course the show ran with it because it made for good TV. That’s just [the] nature of the beast, you can’t cry over spilled milk. It is what it is. Reality shows are not real. They’re for entertainment at everyone else’s expense, except the people that make it, so you can’t regret anything. You just have to accept what it is and keep it moving.”
Cynthia Bailey is Back Filming RHOA With Phaedra Parks After 7 Years
Despite her claims about the Mr. Chocolate storyline and the show being “not real,” Parks has officially returned to RHOA for season 16 as a full-time Housewife, and joins Bailey, who filmed in a supporting “Friend of the Housewives” capacity for the new season.
Bailey spoke about the pair’s reunion during a November 2024 live show for iHeartRadio’s “Two Ts in a Pod” podcast. Bailey confirmed at the event that Parks only filmed with the other women for their last 2 weeks of production, as she joined mid-way through filming.
“She was on another Bravo show called ‘Married 2 Medicine’,” Bailey said. “She got the call [to return to RHOA] and was like ‘I’m outta here!’ It was just amazing because I’ve never seen in the history of the show — with any franchise — a housewife, or past housewife, whatever you want to call it, come back with literally two weeks left and come back as a full housewife with a full red peach in her hand.”
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