In the latest Basketball Wives, a huge feud erupted when Aja Metoyer said her half-sister Cristen Metoyer hadn’t suffered a miscarriage like she claimed — but had in fact had a planned abortion.
Aja told her stylist friend Saniy’yah that Cristen “lied” about losing her baby in a bid to make friends.
Cristen had revealed her traumatic ordeal in a conversation with Evelyn Lozada while they had a makeover in Palm Springs.
And today Cristen — in a long-term relationship with former basketball player Joe Crawford — spoke to Monsters and Critics to set the record straight.
Cristen, Aja and fellow cast-member Melissa Metoyer all share the same father.
And Cristen said that as she has recently been getting more airtime than her sisters on the VH1 show, they may be jealous and trying to smear her to create a false narrative that will earn them more time on the show.
Monsters and Critics: Tell us about your relationship with Joe and how this show has affected it in any way? Has he asked you not to discuss your daughter on the show?
Cristen Metoyer: No, me and Joe, we’ve been together seven going on eight years. Like everyone knows, we do have a daughter — she’s six.
This situation has really brought us closer…just because he has been with me through this whole ride and he has seen what I have endured, emotionally and physically.
There’s nothing that he is surprised about. We knew what we were signing up for, we knew going in there would be drama.
We went in with that whole mindset that this is just a show and when it stops, we have our real lives.
M&C: Talk about your common father, and how Aja said your mothers “straight up hated each other”. Can you expand on that?
CM: Aja and I are a year apart. So whatever our mothers had…my mom didn’t share that she hated Aja’s mom.
I mean, I cannot speak of what Aja and her mom have shared about that whole dynamic with our moms and dad, but for me, I know my mom never hated Aja. She never hated her mom.
That part I can’t really speak on because I wasn’t born. I don’t really know their dynamic because it wasn’t my business. I was a child.
M&C: How often did you interact with Aja and Melissa when you were growing up?
CM: Growing up, me and Aja we knew about each other but didn’t really meet each other until we were about 12.
Me and Melissa, we grew up semi-together. I would go over to her house when her mom was married to my dad.
We had a regular like, ‘Okay, I’m going over my dad’s house’ relationship. But then, it was like I was the only child and I was a mama’s girl. I liked to be with my mom a lot.
M&C: How would you describe your relationship now with Melissa?
CM: My relationship with Melissa…well as of right now I don’t know where we stand.
Prior to that, from what I knew me and Melissa had a really good relationship, we used to live together. For two years. Up until I got pregnant with my daughter.
And I know we did have a little disagreement before taping but then we worked through it.
As of right now, I can’t speak on where we stand because she’s with Aja so…
M&C: Melissa is sided with Aja?
CM: Yes, yes. She has.
M&C: Why would Aja lie about something so deeply poignant and personal as a miscarriage or even bring up an abortion about you?
CM: Okay. So this is my time to be able to clear the whole thing.
When I was pregnant, I was in a really dark place. I was dealing with relationship issues when I found out I was pregnant.
Prior to that, I had conversations with Aja like, ‘Girl, I don’t know if I can do this,’ like ‘I don’t know where my relationship is going…’ and I was really in a dark negative place and she was the one I was confiding in.
Of course, my boyfriend knew everything — it was our situation — and I had told her ‘I want to see my options because I don’t know where my life is going with Joe right now,’ I was just really unhappy.
And then that is when I went to the doctor and that is when I found out there wasn’t a heartbeat. So, she genuinely took conversations of me at my lowest point and just threw them out there.
M&C: Was this a complete shock and blindside when you heard this in the filming of the show?
CM: What Aja said? Oh yes! Are you kidding me? That literally…I was in tears.
It’s like when you have a family member, or your sister, and when you confide in them…you don’t think that they are going to twist your words up, or throw stuff [out there] that you…just any personal thing when you talk to them, you don’t think they would just go to the next person and just start airing s**t out, you know what I mean? Not even really telling the full story.
M&C: Aja’s motivation…What do you think it is?
CM: To tell you the truth, I don’t really know.
I mean, I do know that it was a lot of outside conversations going on with her…as for why she wasn’t taping so much and [conversations about] ‘Why are they using my sister more than they are using me?’.
There was a lot of those outside conversations going on. I really don’t know.
It’s like even just reading articles and what I was told — I was the reason why she and Melissa weren’t on the show, you know. [Allegedly] I was going behind her back ‘doing this and doing that’.
Even when I heard the fact, when I understood what Evelyn [Lozada] was going through, as far as the whole miscarriage thing, I didn’t even think that was going to turn into a ‘thing’…you know what I mean?
I was like [to Evelyn], ‘Oh girl, I know what you are going through, me and Joe just went through that too.’ And that was that.
It’s like, I really do not know where any of that was coming from because, just like I have told her prior to arguments we have had, during taping, ‘Girl there is not one lick of film that they can pull up to where I am talking about you or your situation or that I am airing you out. There is nothing!’
So I couldn’t understand where all that was coming from, and then me knowing my sisters…and just watching that scene it was like, she [Aja] was already mad going into that scene.
M&C: Is your relationship with Aja irreparably damaged? Can she redeem herself with you in any way?
CM: As of right now, we are not on talking terms. But that’s my sister, I love her, and the person that I am, I’m not a grudge holder.
But, as of right now I do have to keep my distance. That’s just for me because what she doesn’t understand is like, ‘Girl, despite this show you really put out real life family stuff, you know what I mean? And then on top of it you didn’t even tell the full story, you were just trying to take digs to make me come out to be this liar, [that] I am just always crying’.
But what people don’t understand is that me getting emotional through this season, a lot of that emotion was the fact I was being told stuff my sisters were saying about me. That’s what I am emotional about.
When I got emotional in the chair when I was getting my makeup done during that scene, I was emotional because I was like, nobody really knows what you deal with when you wake up on a daily basis, they don’t know what you go through in life.
I’m a mature person, I have gained weight. Hey, that’s me, you know what I mean?
And everyone who is really close to me knows that I’ve been working my ass to get this weight off. Going through that makeover…it was like, ‘I am really dressing to make myself comfortable’ you know what I mean?
And me and Evelyn had prior conversations, and that is where that came from.
Evelyn would tell me, ‘Girl, you’re tripping, you are such a beautiful girl, you need to stop being so insecure.’
So I knew when she did present the makeover to me it was supposed to be a confidence booster, just from our prior conversations. But it didn’t go that well.
M&C: What do you want to say to Aja in print, what would it be?
CM: That’s hard because I have a lot that I would want to say to her.
I would want to say that [if] she would have just communicated better with me, this whole situation could have been avoided.
I wish she would have never listened to the hearsay and fallen into the ‘trap’ of being manipulated.
M&C: Who manipulated her?
CM: Whoever she was talking to. I wish she would have come to me and talked to me because this all could have been avoided.
M&C: Putting the betrayal and hurt aside, give me a one or two-word description of the Basketball Wives. What’s the word that describes Shaunie O’Neal:
CM: Boss.
M&C: Evelyn Lozada:
CM: Sweetheart.
M&C: Malaysia Pargo:
CM: Sweetheart as well.
M&C: Jackie Christie:
CM: Question mark.
M&C: Tami Roman:
CM: Straight-shooter.
M&C: The next episode, what is going to happen?
CM: Me personally I go all the way to the end. I think the next episode is Jackie’s party, and yeah…it gets messier.
M&C: It gets messier? So that’s why Jackie is the ‘question mark’?
CM: Yes. At this point, I really don’t know what her motives have been, are or even were.
Find out how these allegations affect the rest of the ladies on Basketball Wives next Monday at 9/8c on VH1.