Photo Credit: Nicci Gilbert/Instagram
Nicci Gilbert had her mainstream reintroduction a decade ago when she appeared on R&B Divas Atlanta that resulted in painting her as the Big Bad Wolf which ultimately played a part in the show’s demise. During an interview with TheJasmineBrand, she explained that though she was an executive producer on the show, other producers didn’t want her to be friends with Syleena Johnson to add to the drama of the show.
But as successful and as much of a fan favorite the show that brought in record views during its season 1 debut is one where Gibert expressed that if she still had ownership, it might still be around instead of the 3 seasons it had that ended 7 or so years ago. She did say she’s working on a new series similar to R&B Divas as well as a new streaming platform that it will air on.
“Our target audience is women and girls. We believe like the first season of ‘R&B Divas’ – we believe you can tell a woman’s real organic authentic stories and it can still be compelling and exciting to watch.”
She continued, “All that being famous and being popular is cool, but [it’s important] to own your intellectual property rights, which is what I started pitching after ‘R&B Divas.’ So every conversation I
had after that was about ownership.”
And she hinted that R&B Divas will be rebooted and airing on her new streaming platform saying, “I know the power of connecting with creative women and making them feel like they have equity and equality that’s all we had to do with ‘R&B Divas.’ We would still be here and there’s a possibility that an iteration of that [show] is coming back but it’ll be coming to my [streaming] platform.”
When asked directly if fans can expect a new version of R&B Divas, she said, “I hope so! I’ve reached out to all the ladies [and] some of them have been really excited. Others have been [working] on other projects and they’re like, ‘let me think about it.’ But I’m not gonna quit trying.”
She even cleared up the air about how things are with her and Syleena Johnson saying they’ve since patched things up. “To be clear like, for people who are like, ‘I hate her call Syleena on her’ or whatever – me and Syleena are good! We have hugged it out – we have talked it out. Hopefully, we’ll have more opportunities to share and work together.”
She spoke about the importance of ownership and how not having that is what sparked the rift between her and Syleena Johnson as it was driven by other producers. “If I had ownership of the show that I created – if I knew the importance of that – it would still be here. I have no doubt because everybody connected to [‘R&B Divas’] knows what my intentions were – for this to be the platform that takes us to the next level.”
The lead singer of Brownstone created a great thing when R&B Divas launched, bringing together fan favorites that for various reasons simply had trouble functioning together as a group, something she says was spawned by others in production. But she has many who would love to see the series come back. And hopefully she’ll have the ability to show that women in the industry are able to get along even if as she discussed, outside forces don’t want them to do so.
