She was Honey Boo Boo

In 2012, TLC filmed a tiny, hyperactive 6-year-old girl with curly blond hair as she flailed about in an interview chair, declaring herself a “beauty queen” and a “superstar.” She dissed her fellow child beauty pageant contestants, calling them “honey boo boo child” and introducing her mother, “Mama June” Shannon, as the “Coupon Queen.”

Her high energy and penchant for creating viral soundbites in a playful Georgia accent (like “dollar makes me holler” and “everybody’s a little gay”) made her a meme and a reality TV staple for the next decade.

But that was Honey Boo Boo, not Alana Thompson.

Technically, they’re the same person. Thompson will still smile and take a photo with you if you recognize her as her younger alter ego out in public, but she’s got an identity of her own now beyond the caricature of a redneck reality star. She’s ready to tell her story.

“I decided that now was a good time because I feel like everybody thinks they know my story,” she told Yahoo Entertainment in the same familiar Southern twang of her youth. “I think it’s going to be an eye opener for everybody because everybody thinks they know … me.”

The 19-year-old is now studying nursing at Regis University in Denver. When she’s featured on the latest iteration of her family’s long-running reality show, Mama June: Family Crisis, she’s doing her best to separate herself from the chaos of her upbringing. That’s what she hopes her new Lifetime biopic, I Was Honey Boo Boo, will help accomplish.

In the film, actors re-create scenes from Thompson’s past. Those scenes are threaded together with statements from Thompson in the present. Though she talks extensively — and candidly — about her mom and sisters in the film, which first aired in May, she didn’t run any of her plans or statements by them beforehand.

“Everything that was said, I just said it. I knew that I wanted to share my story and be the most authentic — I did not want to lie about anything, so I literally told them that I’m filming a documentary series,” Thompson explained to Yahoo Entertainment. “Just know that nothing is left untold.”

Nearly every child star who maintains an audience into adulthood has to reckon with the same thing: How do I confront my past but continue forging a present that’s both satisfying and separate from what made me famous? For Thompson, the solution is simple. She’s just going to keep telling the truth.

That starts with the reality of the emotional abuse that she endured both onscreen and off.

'Her love was only transactional'

Thompson wasn’t just a child star — she was “mama’s little moneymaker,” per a reenactment in her movie, within a family constantly rocked by scandal. In I Was Honey Boo Boo, present day Thompson says, “It was always the same thing. I wanted Mama, but her love was only transactional.”

After Thompson was crowned queen of the Toddlers and Tiaras universe, she got her own show: Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, which ran for two seasons. It was technically canceled in 2014, when Shannon was caught spending time with a registered sex offender. It was reborn — now with Shannon, whose 300-pound weight loss made headlines, as its title character — on WeTV in 2017 as Mama June: From Not to Hot; then rebranded to Mama June: Road to Redemption in 2021, when Shannon began trying to get sober after an arrest for drug possession; and once again, retitled Mama June: Family Crisis, in 2023.

The franchise has been criticized for years for poking fun at its subjects in its portayal of Thompson’s family as “a horde of lice-picking, lard-eating, nose-thumbing hooligans south of the Mason–Dixon line,” “a car crash” and “people to point and snicker at.” Despite the way the shows seemed to suggest that the family should be laughed at because of the way they look and talk, they just kept coming back, demanding to be seen.

Having cameras around all the time wasn’t easy — especially when her family was enduring so many difficulties — but Thompson didn’t mind putting on a show.

"Growing up in the spotlight, there's things I probably would have did different, but it was hard and it was fun at the same time. I have always loved being the center of attention, and I've always loved making people laugh,” Thompson told Yahoo Entertainment. “I loved every second of it. There was never a time I was like, ‘I don’t want to do this.’”

Much of I Was Honey Boo Boo’s runtime is spent detailing the emotionally abusive relationship between Thompson and her mother. Shannon first appeared as a loving-if-misguided mother figure who nurtured Thompson’s love of pageants, yelling “Work it, Smoochie!” from the audience as Thompson performed and feeding her “go-go juice” (Mountain Dew and Red Bull) to get her hyped up. She produced just about as many viral quotes as her daughter too.

But as time went on, Shannon’s substance abuse and relationship conflicts became a serious problem in their home, causing financial and interpersonal strife. At one point, Thompson’s sister Lauryn “Pumpkin” Efird became her legal guardian.

By the time she became an adult and left the care of anyone she’s related to, Thompson had been the star of three reality shows.

“For me, it’s not about fame and it’s not about the money,” she says in the biopic. “Honestly, my story is simple. It’s about a mom and a daughter and breaking the cycle of emotional abuse.”

But the money still matters — or else it serves as evidence that the relationship between Thompson and her mom has always been fraught. Over and over, Thompson explains in the biopic that her mom would cling to her when she needed money, then let her go when she didn’t.

Thompson has claimed that she never received any of the money she earned as a child star. She doesn’t even know how much she’d be owed, at this point. On Season 6 of Mama June: Family Crisis, Shannon confessed that she’d taken some of the money allotted to Thompson in a Coogan account, a trust in which parents are required to set aside the earnings of their child star children. Shannon paid it back but never apologized.

“I would tell people to take it one day at a time and just know that there is light at the end of the tunnel,” Thompson said. “Not every day is going to be your worst day, and not every day is going to be your best day, so just take it slow and work with what you got.”

She just wishes that she could go back in time and tell herself that.

“To know where I [was] five or six years from now to where I am today is such a big, dramatic change,” she said. “It makes me more motivated to see what else I can do in the future.”

'This is my truth'

When Thompson looks back at old memes and videos of herself, she feels both sadness and happiness. Being able to rewatch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo feels a lot like watching a home video. But sometimes, those memories sting.

“We used to be so close as a family … we’re close again now, but when the cameras really started coming out, we wasn’t as close anymore. It’s a little sad,” she said.

Burdened by bullying and a hectic filming schedule, Thompson left traditional school to be homeschooled when she was young. Years later, her return to public high school is shown as a major turning point in Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. She’s exceptionally smart, which wouldn’t surprise anyone who considers how many witty and instantly iconic statements she’s responsible for, and defies the not-so-bright stereotypes forced upon people with accents like hers.

Thompson is fully committed to school right now, focusing as much as she can. She’s officially a junior in college and hoping to become a pediatric ICU nurse.

“I just want my adulthood to be, like, me accomplishing my goals,” she said. “Eventually, in the future, I want to be a mom and stuff. I don’t like to go too in detail because I don’t even know what’s going to probably happen tomorrow!”

Thompson still loves performing, though.

“I like turning on the spark and being energetic and being … fun when in the room. I don’t like to have a little sad party,” she said.

That’s a relief to hear, because Thompson’s still technically a part of her family’s reality show. They’ve all come together in recent years after losing her sister Anna “Chickadee” Cardwell to cancer.

Thompson said that, in spite of whatever relationship she has with her mom, she’s “very grateful” for Mama June: Family Crisis.

“It’s one of the main reasons I’m able to pay for college. I am very grateful for it, but it’s a lot, trying to do college and have the show and everything,” she said.

On the show, she’s Alana now. In her everyday life, most people still call her Honey Boo Boo when they come up to her. It’s not as bad as it used to be, though.

“I remember us first coming to Hollywood, and we were bombarded by paparazzi,” she said. “I probably get [approached] maybe like five or six times a day. When I first got famous, it was like 20 or 30 times a day.”

Thompson laughed when she realized that five or six confrontations per day is still quite a lot, but she’s never known anything different. People might have their perceptions of her — they always have — but she’s focused on who she’s becoming.

“Everybody’s always gonna have their own opinion on me, regardless of what I say, but I just want people to know that I really am a hard worker. I really am this happy little bubbly girl … I’m so sweet and I’m not as stuck up and all famous-person as people think I am,” Thompson said. “I just want people to know that this is my truth.”