It’s hard to think of NeNe Leakes and Kim Zolciak(-Biermann) as friends. That’s the way they started on Season 1 of Real Housewives of Atlanta, the two of them doing goofy things with each other, but they were at each other’s throats by the time the first season reunion came around. (NeNe even called Andy Cohen personally to ask for a reunion because she had some things she wanted to discuss with Kim.) When I think of the two of them, I usually think of “Close your legs to married men, Trash Box,” or Kim sharing a video of roaches in NeNe’s house.
But what about when their friendship officially ended, which both say happened during a brawl on a bus at the end of the show’s third season? Whose fault was it? Kim’s or NeNe’s? And now that the climate in pop culture is quite different than it was 10 years ago, how do we feel about the racial element of the argument? Let’s get in our way-back machine and go back a decade to when Kandi Burruss had her short red hair, Cynthia Bailey just arrived on the scene, and no one knew exactly when Phaedra Parks’s baby was due.
To really get into the fight, we need to go back to the 13th episode of the season, “Tour-ture,” where Kandi sets out on a tour of small venues to test out new material and invites Kim, deep in her “Don’t Be Tardy” era, along as her opening act. Immediately Kim bristles at taskmaster Don Juan’s itinerary, wants the bus to stop every two hours so she can smoke, and has difficulty making it to the stage on time to sing her two songs even though they both have a vocal track and Kim Zolciak should be singing live just like I should be playing in mixed doubles at Wimbledon.