Shaunie O’Neal Explains Why She’s Making Basketball Wives Movie, “I needed some other ways to almost redeem myself.”

This week, news hit that movie producer Tracey Edmonds and Basketball Wives’ executive producer, Shaunie O’Neal were joining forces to create a ‘Basketball Wives’ movie. Some reports shared that the film would be a spin-off that played off of the current cast, while other reports indicated that the project would be completely different. In an interview with Vibe, Shaunie O’Neal shared details and clarified plans for the project. Peep a few excerpts:

VIBE: There’ve been reports about a Basketball Wives movie in the works. Can you speak on that?

Shaunie: It’s fictional. It’s a movie, so it has nothing… I see people on Twitter saying, “Oh god, you guys gon’ take that and turn it into a movie?” You don’t take a reality show and make it a movie. At least I wouldn’t. It’s not a quote, unquote “basketball wives movie.” Even though it has to do with basketball life, it’s not actually taking Basketball Wives from TV and making it a movie. And it’s not about women sitting around arguing or lunching all the time. It’s an actual story. It’s a love story. It’s an empowering story. It’s funny. It’s life. It’s similar—we’ve taken a girl who’s just going into the NBA life and experiencing things and showing the whole story. She learns from the organization. She learns from other wives. And by the end of the story, it’s empowering for women and men. It’s so nothing like the TV show at all. No comparison.

How did the initial idea come about? Did you bring it to Tracey Edmonds?

Yeah, I brought her the concept and the idea. It was important for me to have other outlets outside of Basketball Wives to represent myself and who I really am and what I really would like to put out there. Because, again, I did reality TV and I can’t control that. I can’t control how everybody acts and what everybody sees. This, I can control [laughs]. If I come and I say, “This is what I envision, this is what I feel, this is what I see,” with the help of others, we sit around and collaborate on how this vision can come alive and how we can make it entertaining and how we can make people interested. And [Tracey] understood what I was saying. She got where I was coming from. We always wanted to work together on something, be it TV, movie or whatever. We sat around and talked about this for a couple months and I was so eager to make it happen because I needed some other ways to almost redeem myself. Like, this is not what I’m about people, [laughs] so let me show you. And it’s not my only way of showing but it’s a huge start. And it’s one that I know I’m gonna be 110 percent proud of.

Read the full interview here.