If you’ve seen Nicki Minaj talk about her troubled childhood in interviews, “comedy” isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.
“Nicki is an international superstar, yet not everyone knows how inspiring and hilarious her true story is,” said Karey Burke, ABC Family’s executive vice president of programming and development. “And we can’t wait to share it with the world.”
It’s true that not everyone knows, because the details Minaj has shared so far are definitely not funny. Minaj, who will occasionally appear on the show, has spoken publicly multiple times about her rough upbringing. Here’s an excerpt from a Rolling Stone story in 2010:
“When I first came to America,” [Minaj] says, “I would go in my room and and kneel down at the foot of my bed and pray that god would make me rich so that I could take care of my mother.” Minaj’s father was a violent drug addict [who] once set their house on fire while her mother was inside. She has no qualms about sharing these stories, even though her parents still live together and her father would prefer that she not share their history. “It’s the price you pay when you abuse drugs and alcohol,” she says. “Maybe one day your daughter will be famous and talk to every magazine about it, so think about that, dads out there who want to be crazy.”
She also talked about her father in a cover story for Vibe: “I thought we would just be happy, but with a drug-addicted parent there is no such thing as being happy. When you have a father who is stealing your furniture and selling it so that he can buy crack, you suffer,” she said. “You come home from school and your couch is gone. You’re like, ‘What happened?’”
Minaj made waves in spring 2012 when she sat for an interview on “Nightline” and told similar stories to anchor JuJu Chang: “My father was abusive,” she said, via quotes from the New York Daily News. “We were afraid for (my mother’s) life because whenever he would have a real bad outburst, he would threaten to kill her.”
At the time, that set off a wave of stories, including one from TMZ. The site quoted anonymous Minaj family members who insisted that the rapper was exaggerating about her past, and her father was “crushed” to see those quotes, which included her saying, “I felt a lot of anger. I wanted to kill him. I wished he was dead.”
As for Minaj’s new autobiographical show on ABC Family, the network confirmed the show wouldn’t focus on these scenarios: “It’s a comedy about the lighter aspects” of Minaj’s life, a spokeswoman said. A representative for Minaj did not respond to a request for comment.
Of course, the ABC Family show is also about how her past impacted her evolution as a singer — she’s addressed that, as well. In fact, one of her first alter-egos as a child was influenced when she wanted to remove herself from her personal drama at home. From New York Magazine:
Her dad was an addict who sold the family’s furniture to buy drugs; her mother, a nurse’s aide, struggled to keep a stable home. “To get away from all their fighting, I would imagine being a new person,” Minaj says. “‘Cookie’ was my first identity — that stayed with me for a while.”
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