Ex-‘RHOA’ Producer Crops Phaedra Parks Out Of Cast Celebration Photo

Season 9 of The Real Housewives of Atlanta finally concluded on Sunday night with the airing of a “secrets revealed” episode. The episode, which showed previously unaired footage that was filmed throughout the season, contained both lighthearted and serious matters. One scene showed Peter Thomas, while the group were in Hawaii, confronting Porsha Williams over dinner for saying that she heard from someone that Kandi Burruss and Todd Tucker wanted to drug and rape her one night after partying together. As Phaedra Parks sat silently, Peter criticized Porsha for not taking any accountability for things that come out of her mouth. When Phaedra finally spoke up to defend Porsha, Peter blasted her for “co-signing” Phaedra’s lies.

As viewers now know, thanks to last week’s part three of the Season 9 reunion show, it was Phaedra who told Porsha the serious claim. Phaedra then admitted that she only heard the claim from someone else, and not, as Porsha was led to believe, directly from Kandi.

Viewers never saw Phaedra reveal the identity of the person who supposedly told her that Kandi and Todd wanted to drug and rape Porsha. On Tuesday, Page Six reported that Phaedra, who has now supposedly been fired from the show, actually said on the reunion that it was a producer who told her the rumor but it was edited out of the show.

“Phaedra tried to blame producers for manipulating the scenario, and it was cut from the reunion show. They’re not allowed to break the ‘fourth wall’ and talk about production. It may not have been entirely Phaedra’s fault, but she has to take the fall.”

The site also cited a source from Phaedra’s camp as saying that the source of the rumor was a show producer.

“[It was] a producer who told her the drug and rape story, which she repeated to another cast member. It snowballed. The editing was not kind to her.”

On Thursday, TMZ reported that Phaedra Parks is furious that she has now been fired from the show for repeating the rumor on camera. According to TMZ, which cited sources close to the show, Phaedra supposedly feels as if she has been fired in retaliation for revealing the producers’ role in the whole messy affair.

There have been some speculation that the producer in question is actually the show’s ex-executive producer, Carlos King. In April, about a month after the reunion show filmed and after it was revealed that Carlos was stepping away from the show, numerous websites and blogs speculated that Carlos was perhaps fired because he played a part in the drug and rape rumor. Essence reported that Phaedra tried to blame the drug and rape rumor on Carlos during the reunion show.

According to Carlos, however, that’s not the case. He responded to the speculation by stating that he left the show because he signed a deal that he couldn’t pass up. He implored people to stop the rumors.

In the aftermath of the dramatic reunion show last week, Carlos made some social media posts that some may construe to be his way of defending himself and distancing himself from Phaedra in light of the claim that it was a producer who told Phaedra the rumor. On Tuesday, Carlos posted one of the official cast photos for Season 9 in celebration of a flattering article of the show. Carlos wrote that the article was a “homage to the efforts of the cast and crew.” Carlos cropped out Phaedra, which didn’t go unnoticed by many people. Many people left comments telling Carlos that he was wrong to crop out Phaedra because she was a big reason why the season was so successful and compelling to watch. Even Lauren Williams, Porsha Williams’ sister, whom viewers saw console Porsha backstage after Phaedra admitted that she repeated a rumor that she shouldn’t have, commented on the crop.

“lodwill: Shady crop!????”

Yet some viewers did point out that Cynthia Bailey is also cropped out of the photo so it could mean nothing.

A day later however, Carlos King posted a tweet from an entertainer who declared that Carlos “gave [her] a platform and NEVER tried to destroy [her].” Many people left comments stating that they don’t believe that Carlos had anything to do with the rape and drug rumor. They blamed Phaedra for making Carlos seem like a bad guy.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Kenya Moore did a radio interview a few days ago in which she talked about Season 9 and the return of Kim Zolciak and NeNe Leakes for the upcoming season. During the interview, Kenya also outright denied that a producer told Phaedra Parks the Kandi Burruss drug and rape rumor. According to Kenya, Phaedra simply made it up.

“Phaedra has lied consistently from the first day she has been on the show. What other play does she have but to blame someone else? She got caught in that because she also said, it eventually came out, that she told Porsha that Kandi told her, the producer didn’t make her say that. So that was a lie.”

[Featured Image by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for Focus Features]