Trusting her director’s confidence, Gabrielle Union goes against her own grain and tells her truth.
“There’s nobody in my family, my friends, anybody I can tell the truth to, to be honest,” Gabrielle says. “The only thing I can say is it’s all relative. It’s a hard thing to talk about.”
What is a reality TV star to do? When you tell the whole truth in your life, there’s a good chance you would be shunned and never invited back — or you’re just not ready to tell the truth for fear that everybody will hate you for it.
But that’s exactly what Union did when she appeared to be on the verge of quitting in her first season for “Real Housewives of Orange County.” Instead, she went on to make two more seasons. In the show’s second season, she faced some of the same questions about what exactly she had been doing for four years, but she was more confident about telling her truth.
“I was going through some stuff, and I think the show changed my life,” she says. “I felt like I was letting people down, and I really didn’t want to do that.”
Gabrielle, however, knows she shouldn’t have to. The realist in her knows that it’s her choice to keep her truth hidden. And when it comes to her choices, she knows there is an appropriate time for everything — even telling the truth about the show’s most controversial and controversial episode.
“I mean, I’m so lucky, and I’ve had so many opportunities, and I’m still on my way to being a very successful TV star,” she says. “But I think it’s going in the wrong direction to keep everything so safe on a TV show. So I think it’s important to be able to make mistakes, and learn from them. I want to make mistakes now, and not be held back for the rest of my life.”
Here’s Union’s advice on how to handle telling the truth on a television show she’s likely to be invited to be on, but is not ready to tell.
1) Decide When You Want to Tell Your Truth
“Everyone has a different time: You’re 20, you’re 25, you’re 30