Drew Sidora went on Kandi Burruss‘ YouTube show Speak On It recently and revealed that she had a less than pleasant encounter with Nicki Minaj back in 2015. Sidora, who is the newest cast member of Bravo’s Real Housewives of Atlanta, said that while auditioning for a pilot for a sitcom called Nicki about Minaj’s life, which never made it to the small screen, the rap star called out her weight in a room full of people.
Sidora, who played T-Boz in VH1’s 2013 hit movie CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story, said she went in for a role and was told, “Girl, you don’t look how you looked in TLC.” She went on to reveal that it was Minaj who made the comments. According to the actress, after making it through five rounds of auditions, she found herself in the final rounds for the ABC Family pilot. During the reading, Minaj made it known that Sidora didn’t look as she expected.
Sidora noted that the audition was about three months after the birth of her son and that she was still breastfeeding at the time. When discussing how Minaj felt about her during her previous auditions, she claimed “she really, really liked me.” She inevitably wasn’t chosen for the project.
Sidora, who has appeared in a number of TV shows and films, including BET’s The Game, said that what she took away from the experience with Minaj was that she needed to step things up.
“Girl, get your life together, get back in the gym. You can’t keep blaming it on the baby, and get to work,” she said. “I took the constructive criticism as some real, you know, advice.”
“I turned it into lemonade like let’s get in the gym and really get my career back,” she added. “I’ve been on a journey of weight loss and just getting back to good health.”
While the incident did give her the push to step up her game to return to work after becoming a new mom, she emphasized the importance of not body shaming other women. However, she didn’t have seem to have any hard feelings about the encounter.
“‘Yeah I don’t look how I looked. Yes I had a baby.’ Let’s not body shame,” she said. “But it did give me that energy I needed to put into my health.”