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Many people know August Alsina from his popular R&B songs like “I Luv This S***” and “No Love.” Some may recognize his name tied to Jada Pinkett Smith and their highly publicized “entanglement.” In July 2020, Smith appeared as her own guest on Red Table Talk to address the relationship she had with Alsina during a period of separation from her husband, Will Smith.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, Alsina spoke about the scandal and his reservations about joining the upcoming seventh season of the reality TV show The Surreal Life because of it.
“There was one side of me not wanting to do it, trying to protect myself,” he told ET, “and then the other side of it was, well, it gave me the opportunity to allow people to see and experience me and my authentic energy as opposed to the narrative that had been kind of clouding over my life for quite a while.”
Alsina says finally agreeing to do the show wasn’t easy: “I felt like, ‘Hmm, do I really want to do this?’ Because I didn’t want to go into a situation where people would grab for low-hanging fruit,” he said.
The 30-year-old artist says he has “absolutely zero” ties to Smith and her family and after turning down the show “about 10 times,” he worked up the courage to join.
He said of his role on the series, “Somehow I, you know, was tapped upon to kind of help deal with situations in the house amongst people for situations that I actually wasn’t a part of to even see exactly what happened.”
Alsina joins Tamar Braxton, Dennis Rodman and others on season 7 of The Surreal Life, which premieres October 24 on VH1.
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