Four episodes in, the gist of Mama June: From Not to Hot is already clear. While looking to bounce back from last year’s rehab drama, Mama June Shannon is really fighting to get her younger daughter, Alana Thompson, aka Honey Boo Boo, back from her older daughter, Lauryn “Pumpkin” Efird, on the fifth season, Road to Redemption. And the recent episode shows the two daughters finally confronting their mother after a year.
While this season is all filmed and done, Lauryn says that she & Alana want to move away from the cameras since the decade of being on TV didn’t really let them have a normal life during production. She says she’s ready to have a personalized career path.
“Honestly, I want to go ahead and say goodbye if I’m being completely honest. Only because Alana grew up doing this and you don’t really have a normal life during production,” the 21-year-old told ET’s Deidre Behar during a recent interview. “We have two days off a week and I can’t get my life together in two days. I enjoy doing the show. I enjoy the income that it brings. I enjoy the lives that we impact.”
Alana wants a regular teenage life.
Photo Source: Lauryn Efird, Instagram
“Ultimately, I want to go and be a nurse at a hospital,” she continues. “I want to go and make an impact in a hospital somewhere. TV is not something that I think any of us really want to do anymore, but we just keep pushing ourselves.”
Meanwhile, Alana also wants to be a normal teenager, according to Lauryn. While being on reality TV took away her personal childhood, Lauryn says that it didn’t ruin their childhood.
“I do feel like it was so quick. I was 11, Alana was 6, and we’ve been doing it ever since then. And it’s frustrating,” she explains. “But then I also say ‘no,’ that it didn’t ruin our childhood, because we were able to do a lot more things than the average people that were our age.”
Also See: Britney Spears Speaks Out on the New York Times Framing Her
Lauryn Efird was handed the custody of Alana after the fiasco Mama June created with her boyfriend, Eugene Edward “Geno” Doak, back in 2019. Drug addiction went too far as she admitted the pair would spend $2,500 or more on drugs, and they were arrested for possession charges in March 2019.
After that, the mother-daughter remained estranged, and even now, despite Mama June being 14-month sober, Lauryn says she doesn’t want to take any chances with letting Alana and her own three-year-old daughter, Ella, around her mom 24/7.
Lauryn is not ready for her mom to have Alana yet.
Photo Credit: Paras Griffin, Getty Images for WEtv
“As it stands today, we haven’t seen each other in a year. So that is very complicated, going on and on with life and not being able to share those little moments with my mom,” Lauryn confesses. “I think, not only for me, but for Alana, and even for [my 3-year-old daughter] Ella because she does love her Gigi. She does love being around her.”
“But as being the mother, as being the guardian of Alana and being the mother to Ella as well, I have to protect them,” she adds. “I have a job. She may be sober, but I also don’t want to take any chances, because before when she would say she was sober, she wasn’t necessarily sober.”
Recommended: Is Jana Duggar Courting Stephen Wissmann?
As for Mama June’s boyfriend, Lauryn does not have any worries about him. Despite her mother saying he’s not going anywhere, she believes he is just “a temporary person” in their lives.
As for the future, she says she would love to continue entertaining her fans away from reality TV. While being a nurse is her primary target, she says, ” Ultimately, I do want to do a YouTube just with the little family that we have here in our house. Like me, Josh, Jessica, and Alana, and Ella. I think that we could be funny. I think that we could make that a source of income as well and also just for fans to keep up.”
Continue tuning into BAE Magazine for more stories from the entertainment & the social media world. Be sure to stick around for more updates.
June Shannon Lauryn Shannon Mama June
Last modified: April 3, 2021
