Tamera Mowry-Housley is giving fans a little glimpse into her time during The Real. The veteran actress was one of the original hosts on The Real, a talk show on Fox that premiered in 2013. After seven years, Tamera announced her departure from the show in 2020, which shocked many fans. In the announcement, she thanked her former co-hosts Adrienne Bailon Haughton, Jeannie Mai and Loni Love while revealing she was going to use her extra time to spend with family and focus on new projects.
But it looks like she’s also been using this time to reflect. While she’s never said anything negative about the show or her co-hosts, she recently touched on her mental state during the time she was on The Real in an interview with Lewis Howes.
The Sister, Sister actress faced a lot of criticism during the seven seasons of the show. One of those moments that sparked backlash was in September 2018 when she defended her husband Adam Housley, who is white, after many people deemed him a racist for working with Fox News.
“There are some people who think that my husband is racist because he worked for a certain channel,” Tamera said on an episode of The Real. “I’m gonna look in that camera right there and let everybody know my husband is not a racist.”
While speaking with Lewis, the 43-year-old opened up about how going on the show was like going to battle. “They will take what you say, put it out of context of who they think you are and that is what happened for years on that show,” she said.
“I will tell you this, being on a talk show and you can take it or leave it, it’s not a safe space. It’s not. I wish someone would have told me that because then I would have been prepared. I was not. I learned. Think of going to battle but you don’t know you’re going to battle.”
While it was a tough time for her, she also learned and grew from the experience, even noting how she was a different person at the very end of her time on the show.
“At the end I was fully armed. You can watch the beginning of the season to the end of the season, you see this strong warrior. I wasn’t supposed to know it wasn’t a safe place because I wouldn’t be who I am now. I’ve learned so much about myself doing that show.”
The former child star credited the book The Four Agreements when explaining how she was able to get through the rough patches during that time.
“Don’t take anything personal (which is one of the agreements) if they don’t know me personally, that’s what I learned. And then, I had to do a lot of inner work,” she said. “I had to first recognize, ‘This is an insecurity of mine. Oh God. Why is it an insecurity?’ So it was a lot of self-reflection. That’s why that show, even though it was not a safe place, it has made me who I am today.”
Since departing from The Real, Tamera has starred in the Hallmark Christmas movie Christmas Comes Twice and appeared on The Masked Singer.
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