Rehab Addict host Nicole Curtis is speaking out in a lengthy statement after HGTV canceled her show over an N-word controversy.
RadarOnline published footage on Wednesday, February 11, of Curtis, 49, using a racial slur, prompting HGTV to immediately pull new episodes of Rehab Addict that were due to premiere the same day. According to the outlet, Curtis used the offensive word on the set of the home restoration show.
In a Thursday, February 12, Instagram post, Curtis apologized for her use of the N-word in the clip but insisted that the footage was private and not related to the HGTV show. She claimed the video was stolen and “manipulated” and vowed to release the raw footage on Friday, February 13. (Us Weekly has reached out to HGTV for comment on Curtis’ claims.)
“This isn’t a post I ever thought I’d be writing and I’ve drafted this more times that I can count and nothing seems to be enough,” Curtis began.
She continued, “There is anger, there is hate, there is pain. I’m here to take it. I haven’t been hiding, ignoring, waiting for this to pass. I’ve just been playing this all over and over again and watching the video and having this all out together to say the right thing, do the right thing after doing the wrongest of wrongs.”
“I am sorry. I am filled with remorse and regret, just as much as I was one second after that word was said 4 years ago in 2022,” Curtis wrote. “I show this, I say this and I realize you are getting a limited view, as what has been circulating is a clip of MY footage that was stolen then manipulated, edited and sold to [a] tabloid to coincide with my return to television only to create this chaos of hate, anger, disappointment.”
Curtis said that she makes “no excuse” for the language seen on the video, writing, “I am not [a] victim. Nothing I say or do will take that moment 4 years ago away. I know it was wrong. This will never happen again.”
“I want to be clear that about this ….I’m not addressing this because I was ‘caught’. Im here because I am not okay with the fact that I said that,” she continued. “I am and have been submerged in the African American community my entire adult life. I’m a mom of two children, I chose to live and work in the inner cities of many major cities, but most famously Minneapolis and Detroit. Yes, I hear that word on [a] daily basis, people say it all around me, I listen to it in music, I’m not secluded on the suburbs. I am the white, small blonde in the neighborhood who knows that’s a word that represents evil, pain, torture, trauma when used by someone like me. And yet, it came from me…..”
Curtis went on to explain her inflammatory language in the footage, in which she can be heard saying “fart [N-word]” while appearing to struggle with part of a renovation.
“You ask — how did that just easily come out. I don’t have an answer for that. It did and it shocked me as shown. Now, you ask -what [were] you even saying? I throw together words, this is documented on 15 years of tv, interviews, posts of these random words,” she wrote. “The most famous ‘son of [a] beehive digger’ which took the place of SOB when I became a mommy and [could] not 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 that the controversy has had on her children.
“I have disappointed so many and that includes my children, who I had to tell. My youngest said ‘you don’t say that word’ and I had to say [I] did,” she wrote.
Curtis said she would release “raw footage” of the moment on Friday, writing that she made a “mistake that I realized right away and went into panic.”
“Not terrified this would ruin my career, no, terrified I put that terrible word into the universe,” she said. “That was all my footage, my cameras, my house — it was not for HGTV, not 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 network, etc. I didn’t want to ever hear me say that again — it’s that simple.”
“HGTV was not aware because it was shot on my own personal time, done and equipment. No one was aware except the people in that room,” Curtis claimed. “No one had that footage drives except myself and my ex bf.”
Curtis concluded her post by apologizing again for the use of the racial slur and noted that she was releasing the statement “without a PR firm” and “against most people’s advice.”
“I’m sorry and I understand the hurt, the anger,” she added.
