Alana Thompson Recollects Days with No Meals amid Mama June’s Dependancy to Crack Cocaine After Honey Boo Boo Fame (Unique)

Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson has been a fixture on actuality TV ever since her days on Toddlers & Tiaras in 2011. The rambunctious spitfire received over the hearts of followers and snagged a number of spinoff exhibits that includes her household through the years. However what was her life actually like behind the cameras? Alana, now 19, is lastly able to share her facet of the story.

The previous pageant princess’ life is being explored in a new Lifetime biopic, I Was Honey Boo Boo, premiering Could 17. Amongst one of many darkest moments that the movie depicts is her mom “Mama June” Shannon‘s downward spiral into poisonous relationships and drug dependancy.

“I didn’t need this film to be throwing punches at my mama and making her out to be the dangerous man,” Alana tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story. “However I didn’t maintain again, and if she will get mad, on the finish of the day it’s the reality.”

As Mama June filmed her spinoff collection, WeTV’s Mama June: From To not Scorching, which first premiered in 2017, she fell into the throes of dependancy to crack cocaine.

“I seen one thing was off about her,” Alana says. “She began locking her doorways, which actually made me suppose, ‘Oh, what’s she doing?’”

In 2019, Mama June and her then-boyfriend Geno Doak had been charged with felony possession of drugs — simply days after her family staged an intervention that was captured on Mama June: From To not Scorching.

For extra on the tumultuous lifetime of Alana ‘Honey Boo Boo’ Thompson, decide up this week’s difficulty of PEOPLE, obtainable Friday.

Alana then started dwelling along with her older sister Lauryn “Pumpkin” Efird after she informed her mother in the course of the intervention she had left “not by selection.”

“I might love to return dwelling and stick with you, let you know about my day, however I am unable to do this as a result of I am scared. I am scared to remain at your own home,” Alana stated within the 2019 episode.

Trying again now, Alana remembers “when Pumpkin got here to get me [to live with her], there was no meals. Principally, the home had been deserted.”

When Alana was 16, Pumpkin was granted full custody of her.

Alana recollects the interval enjoying out so publicly on TV. “Folks had been like, ‘I noticed your mama on the information with a busted tooth, strung out,’” Alana recollects her classmates saying. “I’m like, ‘Nice, like I didn’t see that too.'”

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Throughout the time Alana got here beneath hearth for pretending to snort cocaine on social media. “It was actually silly, however I used to be younger, and Mama wasn’t actually reaching out. I believed if I do that possibly she’ll be like, ‘I must cease as a result of Alana’s taking after me.’ It didn’t work.”

Because the present rebranded to Mama June: Highway to Redemption and, later, Mama June: Household Disaster (which returns Could 30), Alana recollects a time a producer “pulled me apart to say, ‘Your mama’s not going to appear to be what you suppose. She’s on medicine. It’s essential to put together your self.’”

Alana and her sisters confronted Mama June about her drug use, and “she didn’t lie,” Alana says. “However it didn’t matter that she fessed up, as a result of she nonetheless needed to do it.”

Although critics have accused the present of being exploitative for displaying such occasions, “I don’t suppose it was,” says Alana. “However at instances I do really feel just like the digital camera ought to have went away.”

Now, she and her mother, who says she’s 5 and a half years sober, have mended their relationship, although Alana says it was “onerous.”

“However on the finish of the day, she’s my mother. When she was dangerous in her dependancy, I simply stored eager about the day she’d get well,” she says. “We’re going fairly good. Hopefully it lasts. I simply now not have any expectations for her.”

I Was Honey Boo Boo premieres Saturday, Could 17 at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime.