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When Ariane Davis shared her feelings about no longer being on Love and Hip Hop Atlanta during an interview on Melyssa Ford’s I’m Here for the Food podcast recently, she made mention of what came with exiting the series after refusing to involve her then-girlfriend as a serious part of the show.
“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.”
Her mention of lost friendships left people wondering where things stood between the beauty and her best friend, LHHATL vet Mimi Faust. During a new interview with Love and Hip Hop producers she talked about life after the series and who she still talks to from the cast, including Faust.
“I am happy to not be at Love and Hip Hop anymore because I feel I’m more at peace. My sanity is intact,” she said in a video published on Friday. “A lot of growing came during and after and I’m very grateful and thankful for what Love and Hip Hop did for me for sure. But I just feel like, I need more.”
She got on the show after initially being offered to come on with a woman she was dealing with at the time. She was dating a female rapper for years and according to Davis, this individual “just decided no, that wasn’t what she wanted to do at the time. She wasn’t ready to announce her sexuality so she declined.”
When the love interest declined, she was still made part of the cast because she was best friends with Faust. Davis said if she were to ever return to the series, she would go about things in a different way, including her friendships.
“I would just have to do things completely differently. I was being taken advantage of as a friend. And I know how to be a great friend,” she said. “I’m not saying that just based off my best friend friendship. I’m just saying throughout the whole…sitch,” which stands for “situation.”
As for who she communicates with, she still talks to Erica Dixon, Melissa Scott, and even sometimes to Stevie J. She doesn’t speak with K. Michelle, and she doesn’t keep in touch with Rasheeda and Kirk Frost but says they are “always cool.”
As for Mimi, they are no longer friends. She doesn’t know why, though.
“I’m really optimistic about Mimi when it comes to our friendship and what can be in the future. I try to stay open to that, but it takes two to tango,” she said. “I can’t just be willing to be in a friendship by myself. But I am open. She’s always been like my sister and I don’t even know why we stopped conversing. And I’m at a point and place in my life like, if I’ve done something wrong to somebody or there’s something I need to talk about on my end or what they made me feel like, I’m going to let them know. And that hasn’t happened because the stopping happened on her end, not mine. I was abandoned by my friend and I don’t understand why. If I’d known why, I would have been [like], ‘Oh okay, she’s mad at me and this is what happened.’ But no, I honestly do not know what the f–k happened.”
“We’ve been in each other’s lives way too long,” she added. “I know so much sh-t. You know so much sh-t. It was a sisterhood and it shouldn’t just have been, ‘I’m out and I’m not going to tell you why.’ It should have never been that. It’s heartbreaking. It was like a breakup and I didn’t know why. Like, what the f–k did I do? Tell me what I did as to why you broke up with me.”
Davis could have especially used Faust’s friendship this year, as her father and paternal uncle passed away within two months time, and she had to cope with that on top of the pandemic. Davis was able to cope though, and eventually found inspiration to move out of Atlanta to Los Angeles.
“I gotta live my life man. I have to. That’s when I came to L.A.,” she said. Visiting one of her best friends there, he encouraged her to start over on the west coast. After some thought, she agreed it was the best step forward, as she has hopes to continue being in front of the camera but also behind as a producer and “creator.”
“I just started looking for places, started selling everything,” she said. “I made the decision to say, ‘let me just go.’ I was ready for something new, something fresh, just a new environment. Here I am.”
