Addicted to rehabilitation host Nicole Curtis delivered in a long statement afterwards HGTV canceled his show on an N-word controversy.
Radar Online footage released Wednesday, Feb. 11, of Curtis, 49, using a racial slur, prompting HGTV to immediately pull new episodes of Addicted to rehabilitation which were to be released on the same day. According to the outlet, Curtis used the offensive word on the set of the home restoration show.
On a Thursday, February 12, Instagram Post, Curtis apologized for his use of the N-word in the clip, but insisted the footage was private and not related to the HGTV show. He claimed the video was stolen and “manipulated” and promised to release the raw footage on Friday 13 February. (Us Weekly has reached out to HGTV for comment on Curtis’ claims.)
“This is not a post I ever thought I’d be writing and I’ve drafted it more times than I can count and nothing seems to be enough,” Curtis began.
She continued, “There’s anger, there’s hate, there’s pain. I’m here to take it. I haven’t been hiding, ignoring, waiting for it to happen. I’ve just been playing this over and over and watching the video and pulling it all together to say the right thing, do the right thing after making the worst of mistakes.”
“I’m sorry. I’m full of remorse and regret, as much as I was a second after that word was said 4 years ago in 2022,” Curtis wrote. “I show this, I say this and I realize you have a limited view as what has been circulated is a clip of MY footage that was stolen, then manipulated, edited and sold to (a) tabloid to coincide with my return to TV just to create this chaos of hate, anger, disappointment.”
Curtis said she has “no excuse” for the language seen in the video, writing: “I am not (a) victim. Nothing I say or do will erase that moment 4 years ago. I know it was wrong. This will never happen again.”
“I want to be clear that on this… I’m not addressing this because I was ‘caught.’ I’m here because I disagree with the fact that I said this,” he continued. “I am and have been immersed in the African-American community my entire adult life. I am a mother of two children, I chose to live and work in the cores of many major cities, but the most famous ones are Minneapolis and Detroit. Yes, I hear this word in (a) day, people say it around me, I hear it in music, I am not the white neighborhood, isolated, I am the small blond from the suburb. know that this is a word that represents evil, pain, torture, trauma when it is used by someone like me.
Curtis explained his inflammatory language in the footage, in which he can be heard saying “fart (N-word)” as he appeared to struggle with part of a renovation.
“You ask: How did this come out so easily. I don’t have an answer for that. He did and I was surprised at how it shows. Now, you ask yourself: What (were) saying? I put words together, this is documented in 15 years of television, interviews, publications of these random words,” he wrote. “The most famous ‘son of (a) beehive’ that replaced SOB when I became a mother and (couldn’t) swear on TV. (In) recent years, I’ve added fart digger, fart knocker. It’s documented.”
Curtis continued her statement in the comments section of her post, writing about the impact the controversy has had on her children.
“I’ve let a lot of people down and that includes my kids, who I had to tell. My youngest said ‘don’t say that word’ and I had to tell (me),” she wrote.
Curtis said he would release “raw footage” of the moment on Friday, writing that he made a “mistake that I realized right away and panicked.”
“I’m not terrified that this will ruin my career, no, terrified to put that terrible word out into the universe,” she said. “This was all my footage, my cameras, my house, it wasn’t for HGTV, it wasn’t for a show, no one would have ever seen the footage, I just didn’t want it there because it was a moment of deep regret and shame. There was no fear of the network, etc. I never wanted to hear myself say that again, it’s that simple.”
“HGTV didn’t know because it was shot on my personal time, my time and my equipment. Nobody knew except for the people in that room,” Curtis claimed. “Nobody had those tape drives except me and my ex-boyfriend.”
Curtis concluded his post by apologizing again for using the racial slur, noting that he was posting the statement “without a PR firm” and “against most people’s advice.”
“I’m sorry and I understand the pain, the anger,” he added.