Original subtitles

You probably know me from "Love & Hip Hop,"

but get ready for my story.

How much time do you have?

Mimi Faust, take one. Mark.

First of all, let's be clear.

I'm not a porn watcher.

Like, in my real life, I don't watch porn.

So, for me to have a porn tape,

how bizarre can my life even get?

It's like, what the [bleep]?

Mimi Faust is a cast member on "Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta."

I'm talking to the one and only Mimi Faust.

Social media was just, you know,

becoming a really, really big thing.

So, not only am I dealing with everyone watching,

I'm now dealing with everyone's opinion

about what they're seeing.

The criticism that people experience

on social media, it really takes root.

After I signed with Vivid,

they're like, okay, "We don't have our money shot.

You need to go, and we need our money shot."

So, I'm like, what?

Really, it was the shower rod. Oh, the shower rod.

Shower rod was a big takeaway from that tape.

And it happened so fast, from them calling...

...to me signing this contract,

to it being signed, sealed, and delivered

was a matter of a few weeks.

Vivid, you took advantage of her and a lot of other people.

I didn't know what I was doing. I had no clue what I was doing.

I am Mimi Faust.

Most of you probably know me from "Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta."

"Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta"

was a huge pop culture phenomenon.

It was one of the first shows to get memes.

It would have clips and gifs circulating each week.

People were tweeting about it.

I'd say Mimi is one

of the main stars of "Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta."

She's definitely an OG.

I never aspired to be an entertainer

or on television or anything like that.

A friend of mine actually texted me and said,

"Hey, I'm casting for this show, 'Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta.'

You should go out for the casting."

I auditioned for "Love & Hip Hop" in 2011.

Half of Atlanta is in the hotel.

It was about 3,000 people in the lobby, like a sea of people.

But through this sea of people, guess who I see.

My daughter's father.

So, I'm like, huh.

So, I immediately walk over to him,

and we had an argument.

This man cursed me out every which way from Sunday.

One of the producers saw us and says, "Hey, come with me."

Took us upstairs.

We get up to this conference room,

and there's all these executives there,

and they sit us in these chairs.

They're like, "So, tell us about yourselves."

And when I tell you, this man just got finished

calling me everything but a child of God, okay?

Then he turns into a saint.

He's like the sun, the moon, and the stars.

and when the planets align, and I'm like, what?

And--And I was so livid. I was like, are you kidding me?

I think Jesus took the wheel.

And I said, "Do you wanna know the problem?

He doesn't know how to come home at night,

and when he does, he smells like P-U-[bleeps]-Y"

And at that moment, everybody said...

"Tell us more." And--and that was all she wrote.

They signed us immediately.

"Love & Hip Hop" is a show of beautiful,

talented people, people of color,

that it's the day in the life of each person.

It is addicting. There's fights.

What you-- This bitch is shaking the table.

- There's love. - Hey, bae.

There's a lot of drinking.

I never knew throwing drinks on people was so popular

until reality television. - [bleep]

We, as a people, are drawn to chaos.

You know, I think that that's why

the craziest reality shows do the best.

I, with intention, refused, adamantly,

to watch that horse [bleep].

I don't like the exploitation

of the relationships of Black men and women, period.

Reality shows dabble

in too many awful stereotypes and predictable archetypes

that, um...

just make my balls hurt.

The culture, when it comes to entertainment in America,

is trash.

By the 2010s, America fully belonged to the Internet.

It's where we were spending a lot of our time.

The Internet moves 24 hours a day.

You know, we're constantly consuming

celebrity gossip through it.

Celebrities are now interacting with us online via social media.

We're the age of eh. Nothing impresses us.

That's what the 2010s are like. Eh. We already seen that.

We got 65 million things

trying to divide our attention all at once.

So, now staying relevant and sticking is real hard,

and so people are willing to do outlandish stuff

just to be able to do it.

I mean, I guess if I summed it up,

I'd say 2010s is the age of clout chasing.

It was a lot going on. It was a lot going on.

I just happened to be in the limelight at that time.

If you know Mimi from reality television,

you may know her as someone that

is always mad at someone, yelling.

Why you talking about Stevie? I'm my own bitch.

But if you were in her shoes in that situation,

you probably would be the same way.

I was really labeled, um, the angry Black woman a lot.

"Oh, she's so angry, or "She's--She's mean."

Anytime a Black woman

puts a little bit of bass in her voice or, you know,

is passionate about something,

we're deemed aggressive, ghetto, um, angry Black woman.

You know how many times I've had people come up to me and say,

I was scared to approach you

because I thought you were-- you were mean"?

The Mimi that I know is-- has far more layers than that.

She's so nice. She's so kind.

So let's get into some Mimi Faust. Mimi is my girl.

We've been close friends for years,

and we are 25 years in.

Listen, we've all been through our traumas in life.

She's been through more trauma

than probably anybody that I've known.

She was basically a survivor since she was 13 years old.

I was put out at the age of 13.

I didn't meet my dad till I was 16.

My mother was introduced to Scientology

by someone she was dating and decided,

"I'm--I'm going in."

They wanted me to sign a contract

to work for the church, and it was a billion years.

And I'm like...

hmm.

No, I don't think I wanna do that.

I have a deadline, gotta be out of here.

And everything in me thought, my mom's gonna stop this.

She never said a word.

I got nothing but respect for someone

that could get up off the floor and get back up.

You know, if you don't fix what your childhood trauma is,

you're gonna go through life

kind of doing-- making the same mistakes

and trying to fill those holes.

And she's just picking the wrong people

or allowing the wrong people to be in her life, like Stevie J.

Stevie J--this is someone she had a child with,

someone she'd been with for many years.

It's one thing to be cheated on in private,

but to have it play out in public,

I can only imagine how difficult that must be.

The people watching it are watching it for entertainment.

So, then you tend to start treating them as entertainment

and that--not people whose lives you're actually seeing.

And so we're seeing this whole dynamic, you know, play out,

and for us, it's just like weekly viewing, you know?

For her, she's gotta live this day in and day out

and deal with whatever is going to be

the fallout from this afterwards.

I hate to say it.

It's not like an uncommon perception people have about,

you know, when women get cheated on.

They feel like somehow it's our fault.

Somehow we had to do something

to drive this man to treat us in this disrespectful way.

And it's like, nah, he just disrespectful.

He got nothing to do with us.

Oh, I was the dodo bird, the doormat.

You're stupid. You're dumb.

Black women have so much weight on their shoulders.

We're not allowed to be too soft because then we're weak.

To constantly have to worry about that

on top of everything else, how I'm making you feel

if I express my emotions, it's not right. It's not fair.

It's thousands and thousands and thousands

of different entities saying different things

and having different opinions and different views

of what they think they know about you and your situation,

and they have no clue.

People wanna say, oh, she makes bad decisions in relationships.

Who the [bleep] doesn't?

Just hers is on television for us to criticize.

I do think that Mimi did come to a point where

she couldn't take any more.

It's probably what caused her to finally close the door

on that romantic relationship.

I was done. I was done, just... just like that.

Hallelujah. We were happy.

Unfortunately, I think that Mimi was used to

that sort of romantic dynamic.

She went from one traumatic relationship to another.

Mimi was at a low place in her life when she met Nikko.

Mimi Faust was in a relationship with a man named Nikko,

and the tape between them had leaked,

and it depicted them having sex, but what actually happened was

that they produced a sex tape willfully and released it.

I would have never in a million years thought

she would do a tape, but I understand how she got there.

No one wakes up and says, "I wanna do a sex tape."

It's like, this happened, and that happened

that led you here, that made you vulnerable,

that made you go into a deep depression,

that made some guy seem like a god

when he comes out of nowhere and has your back

and wants to spend all this time with you.

We haven't even gotten to the good stuff.

- I know. - We, we're still rolling, yeah.

Wow...

Hey, let's talk about it.

Yeah...

Okay.

Can you [bleep] leave?

When Stevie and Mimi broke up in front of the world,

she was angry.

Wanna [bleep] bitches, but you never wanna handle the [bleep]

after the fact. - I'm not tryna argue with you.

'Cause we have a daughter... let me choose my words.

We are currently trying to get on the same page as co-parents.

I'm gonna leave it there.

The next person that came along was Nikko.

I ran into Nikko years ago in New York

after I was on "Love & Hip Hop."

Then we started chopping it up,

and then one thing led to another.

From season one,

I was probably at the worst possible moment in my life.

The things that I was dealing with,

with my daughter's father and-- and the girl that he was with,

just the backlash I got from that...

It was like getting shot with, um...

paint gun pellets.

Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

You just get shot up. Shot up. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

With no-- You don't have a shield.

You have anywhere to hide. You're just like, "Ahh!"

And then you finally have someone

to kind of shield you from it.

He was like a breath of fresh air at the time,

and I was like, "You wanna do this with me,

You know what I'm saying?" And he was so down.

I don't think she saw it at the time,

but in my opinion, he swooped in.

He saw an opportunity.

I've seen Nikko around the business for many years.

He's always wanted to get down.

Two weeks later, he's living in Atlanta,

and now he's in a storyline on the show.

Nikko, from what I can recall, was, like, kinda smooth talker,

charismatic, bit of a ladies man.

He was juxtapositioned as her lover

and just looked at as, like, kind of smooth.

Nikko on the show, I remember I was rooting for them

because I was just consistently rooting for Mimi.

I felt so bad, what she'd been through with Stevie J.,

so it seemed like she found someone who made her happy,

and that was good.

Absolutely had warning signs. Absolutely.

Every time I would go to this man's... place,

he always had a camera on a tripod

facing the bed every time.

However, Nikko did music,

and I would see him from time to time,

you know, recording himself doing his music.

And I thought it was a little odd, but I ignored it.

So, one day he was like...

"You know, when we make love, it's like--it's like art.

It's like art. You know, we should--Let's--Let's--

We should record it so we can see it back.

It's, like, magical."

I had never, ever, ever

recorded myself before.

Why I decided to do it with this... person,

I don't know.

Looking back, Mimi was a perfect candidate

for something like this,

and I think a lot of women that get in these positions,

the backstories is usually the same.

There's been sexual abuse or abandonment.

So, I just need people to, like, look at it differently,

that someone who's been victimized

will continue to get victimized

until they get some kind of help, you know?

I mean, the strong, happy, confident Mimi I know now

would never be able to be put in that position now

'cause she's seen-- she's seen the light now.

But at the time, look at the timeline.

Struggle, gets pregnant,

has a baby, gets abandoned,

embarrassed on national television.

Another guy comes in, swoops in that "saved the day."

And the problem is when you have two people

where one person has-- has a pure heart,

and they're thinking, "I'm doing this for you or for us

and I'm listening to you," and there's love there,

and then you're on some...

"Man, I'll just tell this bitch whatever I gotta tell her

to get what I need. I got this,"

that's the most toxic, dangerous combination.

We recorded ourselves,

and after that, maybe a few days,

few days later, he was like, um,

"Yeah, you know, I got a--I got a homeboy that--that--that,

you know, is cool with the guy at--at--at Vivid."

The moment I said okay to, "Let's see what they say,"

that was it.

And I call it pushing the button.

Once I pushed that button,

there was no--there was no getting any of it back.

But unbeknownst to her,

he was telling her after he already tried to...

pitch the tape to people.

So, it was already out there,

and he was putting the tape out to the sleaziest of sites.

So, it started to grow,

and now she's in a weird position where

it's gonna get released no matter what at this point.

So, you can either take control of it

and sign on with a company like Vivid

or let the chips fall where they may, and you get nothing,

and you're still gonna have your [bleep] out there.

A week later, Vivid ends up contacting me

and calls me and says, "Hey, we need to--we wanna--

we wanna have a face-to-face meeting.

We're gonna fly you guys to L.A."

I didn't know! I didn't know what I was doing.

I honestly didn't know.

By me saying, "Yeah, ask 'em, you see what--what they say."

I didn't know what that meant.

Hell, yeah, Vivid took advantage of Mimi.

Do I know who Steven Hirsch is? Yeah.

He's a really good friend of mine.

I do.

Yes.

Hmm. Um... Oh, man.

You know, I'm trying to be

more... diplomatic as I get older.

Steven is tenacious.

He was successful. He was very good at what he did.

Vivid Entertainment, run by Steve Hirsch.

Steve brokered the deal with Kim Kardashian and Ray J

to be the only distributor of the tape.

Steve Hirsch, by the way, went to my rival high school

in Cleveland, Ohio, and I had known Steve Hirsch for a minute.

Porn basically originated out of Cleveland, Ohio,

so a lot of the kids I grew up with,

their parents were what

they would say were in the "comic book business."

But in actuality, what that meant was

they either owned adult bookstores,

or they owned the distributors

that would supply the bookstores with their novelties,

sex toys, and magazines.

So, Steven came from that era.

Steven had experience. Porn kind of ran in the family.

His father was also involved in the business,

and Vivid was founded in 1984.

When he started Vivid, he just built that company from scratch,

from really nothing, and just by getting

the best girls he could get,

and by signing those girls to exclusive contracts.

He was the first one to do that.

He implemented the old Hollywood contract star thing.

That's why he had the Vivid Girls,

where he would sign these girls to contracts.

I introduced Steve Hirsch to my contact at TMZ,

and before you knew it, he had gotten into my contact's pocket.

Whether it was flying him out for the AVN Awards

and setting him up with, you know,

girls or money or whatever,

he was able to ingratiate himself into the fold

where these guys all thought he was the coolest guy ever

'cause he was in porn.

At one point, he loved having his name in lights.

Every week, there was a Vivid story on TMZ,

and he loved it, he loved it, he loved it.

Oh, he just loved to be the big shot,

and he loved when they would get him a paparazzi, you know?

He was dating Melissa Rivers for, like, a week or whatever,

and he got a taste of that life,

and, oh, he loved it so much.

He did a very good job

of building this company, Vivid Video,

and turning it into something that, uh,

nobody had ever seen before.

Well, you know, for the last 30 years,

for us, it's been all about building the brand.

Steve Hirsch at Vivid told me

he was gonna change everything, and he was right.

Vivid TV, Vivid.com, Vivid Radio, Vivid Clubs.

What I think was interesting about him

is he became kind of a conduit

for people with celebrity sex tapes

to know, because of his track record,

that if you had a sex tape,

and you wanted to release it publicly,

you'd definitely go talk to him,

because pay you money, then market it for you--

it was a win-win from the standpoint of the star

who wanted it out there, and obviously he did very well.

Vivid saw a market,

and they definitely capitalized off of it.

I was offered, like, um, from Vivid Entertainment, like,

$200,000 if I would do one. I said no.

I am too lazy to be on anybody's sex tape, okay?

I am too lazy. Vivid knows better not

to even ring my phone with that bull[bleep]. No.

He does have, I hate to say it,

but a very clear eye on the way this industry works

and what people will wanna see and who

they'll wanna see doing it.

You guys have always been known

for your very high quality adult entertainment, correct?

I think he's a little bit of a one-trick pony.

I don't know if Steven's going to be as

successful doing anything else.

We're having the meeting about the tape.

Steve is a businessman.

He's very well dressed, very clean, you know,

very nice-looking gentleman,

very articulate about his business.

And Marci Hirsch, Steve Hirsch's sister, um,

she was working directly with him at the time.

She pulled me to the side, and she says...

"Your boyfriend is a dirtbag."

And I was like...

that was huge for me 'cause I knew he was a dirtbag.

But for someone else to actually confirm it

and--and, like, put this bug in my ear...

She says, "Not only did he give this tape to us,

but he's been shopping this tape around

to--to everywhere,

and if you don't sign with us, it's your choice.

You don't have to, but if you don't,

this tape will be everywhere for free.

This tape will be all over everywhere,

and there's nothing you can do about it."

I didn't know he was shopping it around.

He said he was taking it to a specific place to just see.

I'm trusting him as my boyfriend to secure us

and do--but, like, he-- he was on a whole different--

his mindset was on a whole different stratosphere

from where I was and what I was thinking.

My name is Ian Halperin,

number one "New York Times" Best Selling author.

I wanted to go undercover to find out

the intricate details of selling and distributing a sex tape.

I was at Vivid, and I posed as a sex tape peddler,

and I put a spin that I had a famous, well-known supermodel

with the world's top basketball star, LeBron.

And by doing it this way,

I was able to get through to Vivid's publicist.

And the one thing I learned from this was

you could not release a sex tape professionally

without mutual consent.

There were a lot of innocent people who were naive,

and they were forced to sign contracts

they were uncomfortable with and later regretted it.

My name is Shawn Holley. I am a trial lawyer.

I'm here to help answer questions about celebrities

and sex tapes and all that sort of thing.

Strong-armed tactics are being used in the room.

Well, this person should never have come

to that meeting without a lawyer.

You can't possibly have any sort of legal agreement

that dictates what's gonna happen with a tape

that you are the subject star of

and not have some say-so as to what the terms of--

it's just, that can't be.

You know, the fact that everything

was done at such an accelerated pace,

if Mimi took an hour to go make a phone call to call me,

a lawyer friend, or someone else that's been in this position,

she'd have been advised not to do this deal.

I had no idea, um, what was going to be transpired

during that meeting that day,

so I did not have a lawyer present.

Ah, absolutely!

Hindsight, 20/20--

I would have had 50 lawyers there.

'Cause if he didn't make the right decision,

the next one would.

You never have to sign a contract

the moment it's presented to you.

You should always get at least 24 hours

to take it back home and look at it and have a lawyer look at it.

You have to get 24 hours to get a lawyer present.

You have to do whatever you have to do

to get out of that room and buy some more time

to, at the very least, consult with a lawyer.

It's easy to say, "Just don't sign it and go,"

you know what I mean? But if the person is about to push,

like, send out to the world this video, you know what mean?

Like, that's not necessarily a practical thing to do.

I didn't know exactly what was going on,

to be perfectly honest with you.

Vivid, you took advantage of her

and a lot of other people.

So messed up.

We are able to structure the deal that we wanted,

and so I didn't go for upfront payment.

I went for a lifetime payment,

since it's going to be out there for the lifetime.

Whenever anyone downloads it around the world,

I will get residual income from it.

That's the deal that I opted-- I opted to make

instead of just getting, like, an upfront situation from it.

Vivid got their cut,

and then we got our cut that we had to split,

which was... not that great, but it is what it is.

Um, hindsight 20/20--no.

Hell, yeah, Vivid took advantage of Mimi.

To tell someone, "Hey, listen,

it's gonna come out no matter what."

I-I think that's even, like... fake news.

But if you don't know the law,

or you don't know how this world works,

she said she had to make a decision on the spot.

She was pressured, and so she just did it.

And they should be ashamed of themselves.

I signed, right?

Immediately after I signed,

they're like, "Okay, we don't have our money shot."

You need to go to the hotel, and we need our money shot."

So, I'm like, what?

I thought whatever he gave you was--

that was it, and he signed off on it.

They were like, "No, no,

it needs to be a certain amount of minutes long,

and we only have this amount of minutes,

and we don't have our money shot."

I'm like, what? What?

So, we got whisked to a hotel. They were like,

"Do you want a man or a woman camera person?"

So, I'm like, "Female, please. Please."

A contract could be void if it has

terms in it that are unconscionable.

So, if it said, "You have to sign this right now or else,"

those terms would be so unconscionable

that the contract itself could be voided, but again,

back to our starting premise of what is your objective,

and your objective is to stop it,

and it can't be stopped,

so now either, you know, you can't beat 'em, join 'em,

then it might make the most sense to do what you gotta do.

So, she's like, "Once I'm there,

I just had to, like, just go-- go--go there and do it."

It was horrible.

I-I'm gonna say that it would-- it took forever.

Mimi told me that it was really uncomfortable,

and it took hours,

because they had to resort to him

messing with the camerawoman,

which sounds like the most disgusting scene ever.

And she had to watch her man,

who she had feelings for at the time--

this is her boyfriend-- um... do that.

And, you know, she said they had to get the money shot,

the money shot, the money shot, or they didn't have a tape.

So, she felt pressured to do it.

The entire situation was awkward from start to finish,

was completely awkward, all of it.

It was business for them. It was nothing personal for them.

It was all personal for me.

This is how we got to the whole shower thing.

I was over it. Like... over it.

And I'm like, "[bleep] this. I'm gonna go take a shower.

I'm hot, I'm sweaty, I'm tired.

You're not producing, sir, for this money shot,

and I'm-- I need to go take a shower."

Like, I--like, whatever.

I got up, dismissed myself from the situation,

and I went to go take a shower.

He follows me into the bathroom,

and that's where the whole shower scene came from.

But again, I wasn't a porn watcher.

I didn't know that what this brought in.

I didn't know anything.

When I say green, I didn't know any--

And it happened so fast.

From him saying, I'm gonna see what it can do,

to a-a-a week later, Vivid saying, "Fly to L.A."

to me signing this contract,

to it being signed, sealed, and delivered,

it was a matter of a few weeks.

No, I didn't know what I was doing.

I had no clue what I was doing. None.

I'm thinking, what's gonna happen when it does come out?

What am I gonna say? What am I gonna do?

I didn't know how to handle it.

I just tried to just bury myself like it wasn't happening.

It's rare that a celebrity is able to break through

and make an audience understand they're hurting a person.

And it backfired horribly.

The tape broke the internet.

The tape did better than any tape Vivid... ever put out.

So, it was Nikko's idea to come up with

we went on vacation, and the tape

was taken out of our bag,

and I wanted nothing to do with it.

I'm like, we don't have anything to back this up.

But no, no, no, no, no!

You know, he--he was very adamant.

He had it, he had it, and it backfired horribly.

Nikko's probably got a lot of props for having sex with her

in the first place, but he wasn't a punchline.

He wasn't a joke.

People didn't make fun of him the way they made fun of her.

It was the shower rod...

that grabbed a lot of people's attention.

Oh, the shower rod.

- Shower rod. - Shower rod.

So, there's a moment in the tape

where Mimi is kinda balancing very impressively

by holding onto a shower rod in the bathroom,

and, um, Nikko London is, uh,

servicing her very kindly on the bottom half of the shot.

And it's kind of a great shot, to be quite honest.

It took the sex tape to a comedic place

that I think that nobody really intended.

And then, because we have social media now,

now they're memes.

It was everywhere.

Everywhere.

All you could do was laugh. You know?

You got people imitating...

...scenes of it happening and, like, or putting--

you know, it just became like a running "SNL" skit.

I know that sales

of shower rods went up through the roof...

after this sex tape.

They're like, "Oh, my God.

You got shower rods in Home Depot."

And I'm like, "No, I don't."

Were they selling those shower curtains in Atlanta

at Home Depot? They--They ran it--

Sold out. Everywhere sold out.

I was like, I don't care. I don't care. Like, I don't...

I just tried to just bury myself

like it wasn't happening.

I didn't know how to handle it.

It's like, you know, someone you love,

and they [bleep] up, they make a mistake,

and the world clowns it, you can't even do anything.

You just have to just take the "L"

and just sail through the storm with her

and just have her back and be like,

"Look, it's gon' go away eventually."

Generally, when people look at celebrity these days,

more so than ever now with social media,

they turn them into cartoon characters.

They are not human beings.

It's rare that a celebrity is able to break through

and make an audience understand they're hurting a person.

I would say a sex tape, it actually humanizes a bit,

but only in a way that keeps them

a cartoon, a source of disdain

and something that they can shame.

That's why I just had to stay off the internet.

People don't care what you're going through.

Someone out there is gonna joke about it

or make fun of it or whatever.

So, you really, really have to have thick skin.

Looking back, Mimi was a perfect candidate

for something like this.

And I think a lot of women that get in these positions,

the backstories is usually the same.

There's been trauma,

and that's why they're so easily taken advantage of.

I think when it comes to women of color,

there is a different set of expectations around behavior,

so just anything that could be seen

as bad or negative or diva-like,

you know, you're gonna be held to a higher standard.

I find when a Black woman does something sexy or sexual,

it's cheapened.

It's deemed more slutty

or ghetto or hoochie mama, or she's a gold digger,

she's trash, she's low class.

Young Black girls have been sexualized since slavery,

since they were forced to, you know,

be raped by the--the slave owners.

And I think some of these-- these--these things

are kind of passed down in our DNA

and then also how that we're viewed as well.

It wasn't just her being berated for having her body exposed

in the way that it was, or for her doing whatever

she was doing in the video.

A lot of people came at her for being a mom.

At what point, Mimi, did you think about

your daughter and the effect that this will have on her?

The moment that I got the phone call.

Again, this goes back to the way

that women are often viewed in media and in Hollywood.

They always have to answer for that specific question,

even though nobody asked Nikko anything like that.

Nobody even was really talking about Nikko after that.

It was all Mimi.

And that's really unfortunate, because it takes two to tango.

A lot of people still think that women are supposed to be

meek and mild and just a carrier for babies.

Sex is everywhere. Sex is why we're here.

So, it's like, why shouldn't women be able

to embrace that side publicly

without, you know, public castration?

Social media has really given people a lot of courage

who didn't have courage, honestly.

it's so easy to be judgmental of all of us

when you're home on your couch, but nine times out of 10,

you'd probably react the same way,

being put in the same situation.

You can't read through hundreds of comments

and see how much you suck or how old you look,

or how much of a whore you are or you're broke

and think that that's not gonna affect you.

It gets on you.

It was 2014, season three of "Love & Hip Hop"

when the tape actually came out.

The Mimi Faust thing I reported on

because I watched "Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta,"

and I could not believe what I was seeing.

The Mimi Faust stuff was, like,

professional wrestling levels of chicanery.

I mean, it was this whole thing where they--they lied

about the release of this tape

and not just profited directly from that,

but made content for their show as a result of that.

And then on the show, it's not even just one scene

where it's like, "Oh, the sex tape was released."

I mean, it's an arc.

Where's your [bleep] integrity? Where are your morals?

Where are your values as a [bleep] woman and as a mother?

There's so many different scenes about this sex tape

and how upset and people are fighting about it,

and blah, blah, blah.

And then next season, she reveals that,

no, it was actually all a setup, and who cares? Whatever.

Just put yourself in my shoes.

Just imagine if it were you,

the same thing that you're saying about me,

if it were you, imagine how you would feel times a thousand,

because you're--they're not the only one saying slick stuff.

I would get off of social media and be depressed.

Literally, I'm in tears. I'm-- I feel bad about myself.

I didn't have anybody to turn to.

I didn't have anybody to really, you know,

I didn't have a soundboard to-- to bounce things off of.

Like, it was bad. It was bad.

It was bad.

Can I-I can be perfectly honest with you?

I haven't dealt with a man since 2014

when--when that situation--

it's like, I-- I've had girlfriends.

It completely just turned me off from men so crazy

that I didn't even want to-- I didn't--

my trust was so broken that

I didn't wanna deal with a man again.

She's not proud of the tape,

and it's something that I know she's gonna use

as a lesson to Eva about the choices we make,

and I know she's gonna use that in a positive way

with her daughter, you know?

I know she is, because one thing about Mimi,

you could say whatever you want about Mimi Faust.

You cannot say that girl

is not one of the best mothers out there.

That's good. Use both your thumbs to crack it open.

I don't want her to make the mistakes I made.

And when I was growing up, I didn't have parental guidance.

I never really had...

a parent to teach me right from wrong or to say,

"This is how you do things.

Don't do it like this. Do it like that. Respect it."

I never had that.

Everything that I went through, I had to do it

and be like, "Oh, shh, that's not it"

and--and figure it out after the--

after I bump my head, "Oh, God, okay,

let me figure something else out."

That's been my whole life.

And what's so ironic about this is because I have this tape,

and she's gonna find out one day, like...

Don't do as I do. Do as I say, because I have been there,

and I don't want you to make the mistakes that I've made,

and that's how I raise my daughter.

If your boyfriend or whoever it is

approaches you with, um, an opportunity--

I'm gonna use that for a lack of better words--

as such as, "Oh, yeah, let's film ourselves,"

don't ever do something that you cannot take back.

Do I regret it?

Yes, I do.

If it feels wrong in your gut, in your heart of heart,

don't do it.

Follow your...

Follow your intuition, everybody. Everybody.

Are there no sex tapes after 2015?

People, especially most young people,

have a camera in their pocket at all times.

It just basically made the entire world accessible,

and, you know, people's sex lives.

So, we've all taken pictures

that we don't want people to see.

People trust the cloud.

They trust that their phones are secure.

This is just part of normal sex lives for people.

Explicit photos of Lawrence

went viral within minutes of being posted.

They were upsetting in a way that other things hadn't.

This has become sort of our new reality.

And so consent was in the winds as an issue.

Nude photos of celebrities.

It wasn't a scandal. It was a sex crime.

I think that quote shifted culture.