Nene Leakes - Never Make the Same Mistake Twice: Lessons on Love and Life Learned the Hard Way

G o to Athens, Georgia, right now, and people will tell you in a heartbeat: Nene hasnt changed one bit. Ive always been loud, a little brash, unapologetically truthful, and, above all else, real. Im like Simon Cowell on American Idol : If you say something I dont like, I might as well correct your ass. Its my opinion, and theres nothing wrong with having one. I have, at least, the right to express it, dont I?

And I love expressing it on The Real Housewives of Atlanta in the spotlight. What, you didnt know? I was meant to be in the spotlight. I knew this from the time I was a little girl, trust. I was that girl, honey. I would be at home, at my aunts house, playing with my Barbie in her little pool and my Candi doll, tooyou know, the one with the hair and the makeup and the rollershaving loud conversations with the two of them about how Janet Jackson, who was then starring as Penny on Good Times, didnt have nothing on me. Id be doing their hair and getting their makeup right and baking cakes in my Easy-Bake oven and having parties for them and me, just bragging to them and the four walls about how we were all going to go big-time and how my Easy-Bake needed 100 watts because we needed to go big with it. Be clear: My people were sharp, honey. My dolls and I would all be in there looking fierce and Id be just going on and on about how I was going to be a star, for real. My friends and I would be over there on Dearing Street, hopscotching and playing baseballthe tree was first base, a shoe was second, and a piece of cardboard, thirdand wed be getting down, me talking smack the whole time. If I got my hands on a piece of chalk? Oh, itd be over. Id plop right there in the middle of the street and write Nene in big bubble letters in different colors, just like I intended to see it up in lights, punctuating each letter I drew with, Im going to be famous, yall. I dont know when this shit is gonna pop off, but Im gonna be ready when it hits!

My aunt and everyone else thought I was just a trip. Theyd bust into the bathroom and see me in the mirror, posing like that picture of Janet Jacksonthe one where shes smiling all cute with her hand behind her headand crack up laughing at me. They just didnt know where I got all that big personality from, where I got it in my mind that I was going to be a celebrity. But I knew all along I was destined for greatness, and that greatness wasnt about to be found in the old dirt roads of Athens. I was raised on the outskirts of Athens, a cute but small college town in north Georgia. My aunt built her a nice house therethough it looks small today, it seemed huge when I was a kidbut we didnt have even the simplest things everybody had in town. Like cable and paved streets. You could wash your car and spit-shine the tires and then drive down the road leading to my aunts house and it would seem like your car hadnt seen water since it left the dealership lot. And dont even get me started on how we couldnt watch any good shows on TV. Lord, I couldnt stand being out there with no channels, moving those damn rabbit ears to try to get reception so I could watch something decent. That just wasnt any way for a future star to live.

Besides, I saw early on that Athens did something to peoplemade them settle for that small-town life and a small-town way of thinking. I watched all my friends and their brothers and sisters, too, graduate from school and then start working at the plant almost the day after they crossed the stage. It didnt seem like it ever occurred to them that the world was so much bigger than our little corner of Georgia, that there were bigger, better opportunities out there. But I had big dreams, and they would reveal themselves in Technicolor and with clear Dolby sound. I was going to be a model, and act, and have money, and a man who was about something. And everything I did was geared toward making my colorful, loud dreams a reality.

I convinced my aunt to let me live with her daughter so that I could go to the school in the city of Athens and so that I could join both modeling school and an acting class downtown. I was on the basketball team and the cheerleading team, and you could usually find me holding court in the restaurants and boutiques in the cute little downtown area near the University of Georgia, the college that anchored Athens. My friends would just watch me move and goad me on. They knew I was a go-gettera hustlerand that I wasnt hardly studying staying there in Athens the rest of my life. I wouldnt even date a dude from Athens. My girls would date those country guys from in town, and I would be somewhere bragging about the guy I was dating from Oglethorp or the boy who was driving in from Atlanta to visit. And while I was waiting for him to show up? Id be talking about making it big. Oh, I was a celebrity already in my own mindwas always like, I dont know whats wrong with the rest of these people, but they better recognize: Nene is a star!

Now, it didnt pop off like I planned until much later in my life. I got sidetracked with a no-good man who abused me, and then became a young single mom, and after that wound up doing some not-so-popular things to survive, things Ill talk about later in the book. But I never forgot the dream, never lost sight of my vision. Id find my way to auditions here and there, and eventually ended up meeting the casting director Robbie Reed-Humes, whod gotten her start casting Spike Lees earlier films and was enjoying a smoking hot career as the person booking talent for the hottest black movies on the big screen. When I met her, Id been looking for a speaking part in a film so that I could get my Screen Actors Guild card, and Robbie was casting The Fighting Temptations, the flick about a secular music producer who agrees to direct a church choir in order to get his inheritance. She got me in front of the director, and he liked me enough to bring me back for a second audition the next day. Still, because I didnt have a name, I didnt get any of the big parts. Instead, they gave me a bit as a stripper auditioning for the choir. I had on a shirt and jeans, and I had to go up in front of Cuba Goodings character and take off my top while I tried to convince him I was just perfect for his church group. My scene ended up on the cutting room floor, but I did get that SAG card, which led to me landing a guest starring role on The Parkers, and I even auditioned for a lead role in Girlfriends opportunities that kept opening doors for me. I also landed the lead role in A Time to Dance, a theater show in Atlanta. My agent even got me a meeting with the head of casting over at UPN. I wasnt on my game in that interview, though. I thought it was an audition and so I showed up in the standard audition outfit of jeans and flip-flops, ready to read and take a head shot and leave my callback information and be on my way. I must have looked so new to her, like I didnt know what I was doing. Im not going to lie: I didnt. I had no clue that she wanted to talk to me about a new TV show the network was planning Eve and they were thinking about me as a sidekick. That lady saw my inexperience, but she kept talking to me, and her words inspired me. I learned the lingo from her and got some ideas, too, namely, that a reality show might be the perfect platform for Nene to go big.