NEWSRed Carpet Confidential: TLC Talks About Missing Left Eye And The Controversy Around Their New VH1 Movie
Oct. 16 2013, Published 7:52 p.m. ET
While waiting for the guests of honor to arrive during the CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story premiere held Tuesday at AMC Loews Lincoln Square in NYC, Ashlee Simpson joins beau Evan Ross and his legendary mom Diana Ross inside, while Missy Elliott laughs it up on the red carpet.
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It would take a supergroup to get these music stars together, and that supergroup is TLC.
Starring Keke Palmer as Chilli, Drew Sidora as T-Boz and Lil Mama as the late Left Eye, the original members are sure the VH1 biopic will ruffle some feathers.
Are they worried about the fallout of the biopic?
“I’m not, because we were honest,” Rozanda “Chilli” Thomas, 42, tells me. “It’s from our perspective. It’s our story of what we went through. Whoever gets upset, they’ve got to get over it. laughs”
Her bandmate Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, 43, is more forthcoming.
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“Pebbles will have problems,” she tells me of the singer best known for hits Girlfriend, Mercedes Boy and Giving You The Benefit. “She thinks somebody’s going to slander her name, and that’s not the case.”
She continues, “Perri has done good things for us. She helped us get here, she put us together, she taught me a lot about being anindividual artist, but we didn’t always agree. This movie is our perception of how we see things, and how we felt about the things that were done to us. You don’t have to like it.”
Tragically, beloved bandmate Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was killed in a car accident in Honduras in 2002.
Still, the girls didn’t call it quits.
“We were in pain,” T-Boz says. “We lost a sister. You don’t get over it, you just learn to deal with it better as time goes on. Her memory lives on through us. We would never replace her—we have no intention to do it. We’re continuing this dream and moving.”
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Performing without Lisa has been difficult.
“For ten years, when she was on the Jumbotrons, we couldn’t look back,” T-Boz says. “You find new ways to perform, and keep going. We have children to feed, and this is a legacy we started together with Lisa. We want to ride that until the wheels fall off, so she’s still incorporated.”
Luckily, Lisa’s sister, Raindrop Lopes, who is decked out like her big sister with the left eye lined, is here tonight, and gives them her blessing to continue.
"I would like to see the old songs stay with Lisa on them, and for {the other girls} to do new songs,” she tells me.
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Raindrop shares her fondest memory of Lisa, which involved “playing baseball with chicken legs and corn.”
“She would let us do whatever we wanted when she babysat,” she says. “Those are the funnest times of our lives.”
Would Lisa approve of the movie?
“As long as it embodies her character the way she was, she’d be fine with it.”
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TLC's greatest hits album, 20, is in stores now and CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story premieres Monday, November 21 at 9pm ET on VH1. Will you watch? What’s your favorite memory of TLC? Tweet us @OKMagazine.
