Ariane Davis Speaks On What Was Behind Exit From Love And Hip Hop Atlanta

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For six seasons, Ariane Davis was a supporting player on Love and Hip Hop Atlanta, moving amongst the drama without actually being fully involved in it. She could be peacemaker or instigator. Compared to those who had to fight or be involved in love triangles to get their check, she maintained her privacy while still being interesting enough to warrant being brought back season after season.

The stunning socialite quietly exited the series in 2017 and would eventually leave Atlanta for Los Angeles to pursue bigger and better things. When speaking with friend Melyssa Ford for her podcast I’m Here for the Food, Davis opened up about the toll reality TV takes on those who partake in it, including her former cast members. She said some would go to great lengths to secure screen time and a check, only to feel bad about the way they’d allowed themselves to be portrayed.

“I think when you don’t go in with a sense of, ‘I’m going to stay in control no matter how big or small my role is,’ you’re going to get f–ked up mentally,” she said. “If you’re not mentally prepared going into it, and you don’t have people around you that’s mentally helping you prepare, then yeah, you’re going to fall by the wayside. And I can say that firsthand, from people that I’ve worked with on the show, there were times off-camera, tears in my garage. For hours they would be crying. I’m not going to name specific people but there were times where I literally had someone tell me, ‘I sold my soul to the devil.'”

“It was trying sometimes for me too, but I always knew my stance,” she added. “Y’all couldn’t threaten me with sh-t about not being in a scene or not getting paid because my mental health meant more to me, my integrity meant more to me, my morals. My mother and my grandmother were watching the show. I didn’t care about all of the in and outs of what everybody else cared about. They really didn’t care at a point. It was like, ‘No I have to get paid. I have to be in this scene. I have to work.’ No you don’t. Not if it’s making you feel like sh-t in the bottom of your stomach. It’s okay to say no.”

Davis said that a lot of LHHATL cast members who came and went would feel obligated to go to such lengths because of bad contracts they signed. She had a good lawyer so things played out differently for her. She was able to set some boundaries, and if you noticed, keep her personal life away from cameras unlike the vast majority of main and supporting cast members.

“I drew the line. I mean more to me than that show does,” she said. “Again, my sanity means more to me than that show did. Even losing friendships, I still mean more to me. I didn’t want to go down that road.”

She would eventually leave the show at a time when producers wanted Davis, who is bisexual, to share more about her personal relationship. This was a gripe that her former cast mate and BFF Mimi Faust shared about being hounded to put her own relationship with Ty Young on TV. And while Faust took a pay cut to avoid doing so, Davis decided it was just time to go.

“It was mutual for my exiting because I wasn’t going to give them anymore than I was already giving,” she said. “At that point, that storyline was getting old. So I think, it was them wanting more from me and me saying, ‘oh hell no.’ It did have something to do with pay, but also, you couldn’t pay me enough to bring my personal life on this particular show. You don’t know the work I’d been doing to save my relationship. To be rehashing things that unbeknownst to them that we worked through, yeah, nah. It wasn’t worth it. Because nobody had to go home with us but us. I chose that over anything because it just wasn’t worth it.”

Davis isn’t the first cast member to share that they left their particular Love and Hip Hop franchise to protect their image and sanity. Hit the flip to see a few more.

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Deb Antney

After appearing on the Atlanta franchise with son Waka Flocka and daughter-in-law Tammy Rivera, Deb Antney said she came to realize that the way they portrayed Black men and women on the series was problematic.

“It’s very disgraceful for women,” she told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It makes our men look horrible. I’m just not for it. I’m not for the drama like that.”

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Masika Kalysha

“I didn’t like the way I was being portrayed,” said Masika Kalysha of her decision to leave Love and Hip Hop Hollywood. “I didn’t like the situations I was being put in. It ended up being a lot of situations that in my real life would never occur.”

She also wasn’t happy that a revelation about a miscarriage was cut from the show.

“They edited it out and my PR person asked them why and they said legal purposes,” she said. “Anything that was positive or family oriented was taken away and replaced with things that weren’t going on in my everyday life so that was my final straw.”

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Joseline Hernandez

Though she would return to Love and Hip Hop (somewhat) as part of the Miami franchise, the Puerto Rican Princess left the Atlanta franchise that made her a star due to issues with creator Mona Scott-Young and not appreciating the side of her they kept showing on TV.

“So y’all made me [look] like I’m just this crazy person, and everything that went on in the show wasn’t [because] of Mona Scott-Young,” she said. “Mona, let’s just keep it real. I quit the show, so now y’all wanna run back these [videos] that I did three years ago… You mad because you owe me money, and you on some bullsh-t.”

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Waka Flocka and Tammy Rivera

Waka Flocka was not as involved on Love and Hip Hop Atlanta as his wife Tammy, but he still wasn’t pleased with the way the show captured his relationship and issues with his wife.

“On ‘Love and Hip Hop: Atlanta’ they only give you a good 15 seconds to show who you are in a relationship, and we’re in a different space at the time,” he told the New York Post in 2019. “It was rushed and people formed an opinion. And of course, through all of our turmoil, we have been pretty much open about our lives. You’ve been on this roller coaster with us all the time, so this is it.”

They’ve since moved on to shows on WE TV after departing VH1.

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Moniece Slaughter

The Love and Hip Hop Hollywood star just completed her tenure on the series and left on a positive note. But before the lovey-dovey exit, she had been open on social media about feeling like footage of her only focused on the negative. Her music, which was very important to her (she sings), was also not shown on the series in a good light.

“I have never in my life been so grateful for a chapter to end,” she said on social media. “I’m so glad this is my last season. Tonight I got tagged in a clip of my vocal lesson scene. I sang MY OWN SONG. IN MY OWN LESSON. WITH MY OWN COUSIN. This is the 2nd scene where my music has been cut…”

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Mimi Faust

While Faust is still doing LHHATL as far as we can tell, as we stated earlier, she took a pay cut to keep her relationship with now fiancée Ty Young from being exploited on the show.

“On my last interview, because you know, every season, we have to go back and talk to the producers and they’re like, ‘So what’s going on in your life? X, Y, and Z.’ And I think the second question I was asked was, was Ty cheating on me. [It] was the second question the producers asked in my meeting. I was like, ‘Are you serious?’ Am I supposed to be f–ked up, in a bad place, being cheated on my whole life? At what point am I allowed to grow and be happy and be okay and be good? Why do I have to consistently be cheated on every relationship that I’m in? But that’s what they want,” she said. “And they were like, you either find some drama, find some drama or…you better go find some drama. I wasn’t willing to do that. I wasn’t willing to put my relationship in that place because if you bring BS to the table, you brought BS to your table. My girlfriend’s not with it. She’s not with, ‘oh let’s play and act like…,’ she’s not that girl. So that wasn’t an option for me, to act like she’s cheating on me or I’m cheating on her, for TV. We not doing that, so I took a pay cut.”

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Jessica Dime

The rapper took to Twitter to say that she left the Love and Hip Hop Atlanta franchise for a number of reasons.

“Cuz I wouldn’t sign management deals, didn’t go to the reunion cuz they let the EP get her makeup done by my makeup artist instead of me, oh and I wouldn’t have 3sums wit producers . Lmaoooo”

In a recent interview though, she made it seem like her exit was simply because it was time for her to go and focus on making music. Like the strip club, she said, you can’t stay too long.

“I feel like with Love and Hip Hop it was a stepping stone for me…I can never complain about it,” she said. “I just wish it would have been more focused on me as an artist.”

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Tommie Lee

The Love and Hip Hop Atlanta star shared in 2019 that she was leaving the show after those behind it didn’t support her during a very hard time in her life.

“What I was going through in my real life and like, real-life turns…basically, with my daughter, I would not want to film that,” she said. “And basically how a lot of things was handled. I lost someone that they were interviewing and basically he was killed. I didn’t know that you were supposed to get flowers or stuff like that when somebody passed because it’s not my son. It’s not my father, you know what I’m saying? But Fashion Nova and PrettyLittleThing, they sent me flowers when I came home. And the people that knew him and who were interviewing him and wanted him to be lined up to be there, they didn’t do that stuff. It kinda made me look at things kinda different.”

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Chrissy Lampkin and Jim Jones

Though she would return for Season 10 of the show she helped kick off, Jim Jones and Chrissy Lampkin initially left Love and Hip Hop due to issues with production and the direction the show was going in.

“It turned into Gladiators.  I felt like we were back in the Roman times,” Chrissy said of the nonstop conflict. “You bring somebody in and it was survival of the fittest and that’s never what I signed up for.”

“Me and Chrissy were asked to do the third season of ‘Love & Hip Hop’ and we would have been executive producers on the show because they know it was our show,” Jim said. “But because we don’t choose to compromise our dignity and we’re not willing to jump off a roof for this blaxpoitation, we would rather do our own television show and fight our own battles that way.”

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Somaya Reece

Another original cast member who would return for Season 10, Somaya Reece initially left Love and Hip Hop after feeling like the show didn’t represent her well.

“Everyone left for the same reason – it was time to move on from the show. It does not, from the beginning, reflect my brand or what I’m doing,” she said. “Prior to Love & Hip-Hop – I mean people do know this – I had a very large fan base from Myspace. I was the #1 independent artist from Myspace that was brought to get signed. I was doing music and acting, and that was pretty much my goal. So when I got on the show, I thought it was going to be what they promised, which was girl power, and it wasn’t.”