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Mehgan James wears many hats. In addition to starring in a host of different reality shows, she is also an entrepreneur and an educator. We recently had the opportunity to chat with James about her new show, “Notorious Queens,” her recent professorship, and her “respectfully cheating” commentary.
MN: Tell me about “Notorious Queens,” which is streaming on ALLBLK?
Mehgan: “Notorious Queens” is about four women who either live in or are from LA leaving their notorious pasts behind to, I guess, become bigger and better people. More notorious [laughs].
MN: So you were blowing up in recent weeks due to your “respectfully cheating” comments. I wanted to probe a bit further to hear more of your thoughts about the subject and how you feel about people’s reactions.
Mehgan: I just feel like people were not being realistic with themselves and I also feel like they just took a part of the conversation and ran with it. To me, respectfully cheating isn’t giving your guy a hall pass to cheat. If you come from a belief system where you feel like every man cheats, like I do, I feel that if a guy cheats it should be done respectfully and I feel like if you find out about it, it’s not respectful, if that makes sense.
MN: Yeah, so basically, if you find out, he’s being sloppy.
Mehgan: Yes, I feel like if you love me enough, I’ll never find out about it. I’m not saying that it’s okay to cheat on me as long as you don’t bring back a disease or a baby. I’m not saying that. I don’t know. I don’t get into a lot of real relationships, but I feel that once two people commit to each other and they’ve invested so much time and energy, cheating shouldn’t be a dealbreaker. But I’m just speaking for myself. If I’ve been with my man for 20 years, we’ve been married for 20 years, we see each other every single day for 20 years, and my man goes out and has a one-night stand, I’m not leaving. I don’t know, I just feel like there are different strokes for different folks. Like I’m not trying to tell people how to live their lives. I’m just saying what my truth is.
MN: I can definitely respect that. When you stated, ‘Believe it or not, your man is cheating,’ did you find that people were particularly irritated by that part of your comments?
Mehgan: It’s just people are so unrealistic and I just feel like I said what everyone thinks but would never say. There are so many women that get cheated on every day. I use Jay Z and Beyoncé as an example. I was just like, you know, Jay Z cheated on Beyoncé and she went back. People are like, ‘Well, if your man cheats on you, he doesn’t love you.’ So, I was like, ‘Well, does Jay Z not love Beyoncé?’ Like, hello. And then they’re like, ‘Well, they’re different.’ And I was like, ‘No, they’re not. They’re human. Period.’ I also believe if Jay Z didn’t cheat respectfully, Beyoncé would have left him. If Jay Z would have brought a baby back or disease back or if she found out he was gay, Beyoncé would have left. So basically let Jay Z cheat respectfully and took him back. Period.
MN: So this was something I saw you mention maybe a year ago. You shared that you worked as a professor, which I thought was really interesting. I wanted to ask how that’s going and if you’re still teaching.
Mehgan: During the pandemic, for almost a year, I taught at a college. It’s one of those career colleges It was amazing. I didn’t get to personally meet any of my students because everything was done online due to COVID, but it was a great experience. I feel like a lot of people don’t really know much about me. They just know, you know what they see in the blogs and on TV but I mean, I did go to college, I have two degrees, you know, I don’t know. I mean what do you want me to say? I’ve had real jobs. People just perceive me as this Instagram model. No, I have two college degrees. I’ve been a professor. I’ve been a teacher. I have my own business. I’m an entrepreneur.
