Nivea, Tammy Rivera And Eva Marcille Talk 'Eat Slay Love'
‘Eat Slay Love’ Exclusive: Nivea, Eva Marcille & Tammy Rivera Discuss ‘The Big D’… (As In Divorce) And Their Girls Trip Culture Clash! - Page 2
With the week we’ve had, we’re definitely all for finding solace in sisterhood!
Source: Courtesy / Peacock
This week Peacock premiered their three-part series Eat Slay Love which follows Nivea, Eva Marcille, Tammy Rivera and London Hughes on a three city tour across Vietnam to celebrate Nivea’s birthday and find the peace and fulfillment they’re seeking.
BOSSIP Sr. Content Director Janeé Bolden chatted up Eva, Tammy and Nivea ahead of the series debut this week to discuss their experience, starting with why they chose Vietnam as the perfect destination for soul searching and sisterhood.
“Why not?” Nivea told BOSSIP. “Seriously it was just somewhere that was so kind of foreign to us, as being not explored, we have never been. It’s quite a large place and we wanted to experience the culture and you know, why not?”
“Nivea is a maverick, she is a unconventional and not to go against the grain, but she beats to her own drum and she makes amazing music so that melody slaps,” Eva added. “She is her own thing, so Vietnam it made sense it was it was very Nivea, it was very like, ‘Let’s go explore!”
“And it was hard to find a place that none of us have ever been to, there’s a lot of places that we’ve been, so it was like narrowing it down was tough,” Tammy continued.
Source: Courtesy / Peacock
“I must say it was even more shocking once we got there,” Nivea explained. “Like — this was perfect. We didn’t expect to give what we got out of it and inside and out. Just to the experience and what we got to see and do, it was just perfect.”
Source: Courtesy / Peacock
Both Nivea and Tammy Rivera have experienced high profile divorces — [Nivea was married to singer/songwriter producer Terius “The Dream” Gesteelde-Diamant, previously known as Terius Nash, from 2004-2008 while Rivera is the former spouse of rapper Waka Flocka Flame, aka Juaquin Malphurs. They were married from 2014-2022.] Throughout the episodes, the women are there to support Eva Marcille, whose 2023 divorce from attorney Michael Sterling was very fresh at the time Eat Slay Love was filmed.
“The Big D!” the three ladies chimed, nearly in unison, when asked about divorce being the common thread they share and what it was like doing a girls trip while healing.
“I keep using the same word but — cathartic,” Eva Marcille told BOSSIP about trekking Vietnam after ending her marriage. ” It was very healthy for me. I’m a person where I don’t like to lie to myself so I’m not going to lie to others and this was a very difficult time, but to deal with it and to try to get through it I had to be honest.”
Source: Courtesy / Peacock
“I was actually shocked by your level of openness,” Tammy Rivera interjected.
“Me too,” Nivea added. “I just didn’t think you was gonna be that open either. She was ready to pour it out and share with us.“Because it’s either that or don’t come because this is my life, this is what I’m going through,” Eva continued. “And I was like I was going to be way more private but then I realized that you guys have been through some of my reality. It was an exchange going on. I mean exes, who are like very famous, you lived your life in the public before divorce and raising children, yeah so I feel like if anyone could actually relate to what I’m going through and then try to help me reconcile these feelings it was Nivea and Tam because they just they get it.”
Source: Courtesy / Peacock
So far everything in this interview has been spoiler free — so we want to preserve some of that for the folks who haven’t watched all of the episodes yet. For the folks who have watched, or who don’t care about spoilers, hit the flip to find a little insight about the unexpected culture clash the women experienced while filming Eat Slay Love.
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Source: Courtesy / Peacock
So… about that spoiler alert. The Eat Slay Love journey to Vietnam begins with four women, the fourth being comedian London Hughes, who was not present for the BOSSIP interview.
“She’s in LA,” Eva Marcille explained when we mentioned the elephant in the room. “We luckily all live in Atlanta. Tammy and I live around the corner from each other – Nivea’s up the street. She’s in L.A. so most likely that’s why she wasn’t here.”
While the Eva, Nivea and Tammy assured us that there is no love lost for London, they did speak to the issues the group had beginning in the first episode, where London, who is British, had several heated conversations with both Eva and Tammy, mostly about poverty in the U.S. vs. Britain.
Source: Courtesy / Peacock
“You can’t make all your friends be friends with each other,” Nivea told BOSSIP. “Some stuff just don’t mesh. What we were trying to accomplish and I think we did, was to introduce conversations of different cultural differences and backgrounds and POVs. Represent different types of Black women around the world and seeing how we can still provide some sort of a sisterhood or learn from each other. It’s like, you know what — I don’t mess with you but I can take this with me and I learned this out of that situation. And I really think the London’s part in that was that for her and for us as well.”
“Especially for me, what I took away from that situation was, I really did learn from it a lot,” Tammy added. “Honestly, I sat back and I had to reevaluate everything and myself and the situation, to see where she was coming from. Even if she didn’t understand where I was coming from, I still wanted to try to understand. For me I’m like, ‘OK you’re able to coexist with people even if you don’t agree with them or understand them and they don’t understand you.’
Source: Courtesy / Peacock
“You can disagree without disrespecting,” Eva added. “The hyperconnectivity of of social media makes everything very convoluted. It makes you feel as if sometimes you know people or you know realities because you saw it online. It’s like you’ve been watching her Instagram so it’s like, ‘Girl I was with you when you were traveling!’ I feel like this trip helps us to understand that there is a cultural difference as an American Black woman. It is a thing. If you’re not a Black American woman you don’t understand it. For me I think we showed the world in this. London was a great addition because she’s not American. I have some girls from the UK — Estelle is my girl. I got some Black London girls. You know. Cynthia Erivo. But there is a difference in the way in which they were raised. For this, preconceived notions, stereotypes, ideas, TV shows as you will see.”
In the interest of not further spoiling, we won’t get specific, but several popular SCRIPTED television series were cited in some of the offending conversations, so Eva’s comments about the way people learn about culture are spot on. Putting those cultural differences to the side, Eat Slay Love does not dwell on the drama. As the cameras continued to roll, the laughter and appreciation for Vietnamese food, landscapes and people, as well as the women’s personal growth, became the main focus, resulting in quite a beautiful unscripted series.
All three episodes of Eat Slay Love are currently streaming on Peacock.
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