*”Queens” and “Power” star Naturi Naughton chops it up with TV and Radio personality and EURweb.com Spotlight host Jazmyn “Jaz” Summers.
It’s been over 5 years since Naturi endured a painful breakup with her daughter Zuri’s father and penned “Stay Too Long,” a song about their relationship writing, “Three months after the baby was born, your love for me was gone. How could you flip the script on me?… Love makes you foolish and stay way too long.”
“Everything I’ve experienced I try to use as my testimony,” Naughton shares with EURwerb.com Spotlight. “I kinda wear my heart on my sleeve and talk about things openly because there’s no shame in being heartbroken. There’s no shame in being hurt. There’s no shame in being in a bad situation. We have to get people to talk about things that seem a little taboo whether it’s mental health or physical health. I’ve been through a lot in my life and I’m just grateful to make it to 2022.”
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She says she has found true love and happiness with her fiancee Two Lewis, a prominent manager in the music and entertainment industry, who was introduced to her by Omari Hardwick, her “Power” co-star.
“My TV husband introduced me to my future husband,” she tells Jaz. “It’s pretty awesome to this day. He says, ‘see Tur, I told you (you’d find love).’ He gets a lot of credit. I’m so happy he changed my life in more ways than one.”
“Omari spoke so highly of Two to me. I don’t even know that he was trying to hook us up,” she recalls. “I think he was just trying to put us together musically. I don’t think it was intentional. But to this day Omari’s like, ‘I knew this was what you needed!’”
She adds, “I can be a challenge and he knows Two’s the man for the challenge.”
Two told Essence Magazine he has a one-year rule where he wanted to spend time getting to know the star on a deeper level before making things official as boyfriend and girlfriend. It was something women in his past weren’t interested in seeing through.
“I have that one-year rule where I want to build a friendship and build something I could see lasting for a long time,” I was very impressed that she waited this time out. We learned each other, prayed with each other, went to church with each other, and just developed this real foundation and connection and friendship.”
Naturi had to deal with a one-year no-sex rule.
“I had to accept that the same way women have standards. Men, especially a good man, does too,” Naughton adds. “The way he emphasized our relationship with God, our relationship with ourselves, just being able to do things that weren’t about the physical, sex or things like that, it let me know he wanted to dig to a deeper level and get to know me on a spiritual and an emotional level. That was how I got more comfortable because I started to see, Wait a minute. This ain’t just for boyfriend time, this is a setup for a husband.”
By Christmas 2020, he put a ring on it not only proposing to her but to 4-year-old Zuri.
“I wanted to make sure Zuri knows how she should be cared for and loved for the future,” he says. “Naturi always says I do over-the-top things and I always tell her I try do over-the-top things so [Zuri] knows not to settle for the bare minimum. I want her to have her standards high when she gets older so knows what to accept.”
Singer Montell Jordan will officiate the couple’s wedding this spring. Omari will serve as Two’s best man.
Naturi is not only riding the love cloud but she recently returned to Starz “Power” in the season finale in her breakthrough role as Tasha.
“Tasha changed my life. It was a role that I was excited to get. I really needed to work. I was a struggling actress. Thank god they chose me to be the queen of Starz in the “Power” universe and look at how far it’s come,” she gushes.
In the season finale, her son Tariq (Michael Rainey) arranged for his younger sister, who he had been fighting to gain custody of in the absence of their mother, to move with Tasha who was revealed to be living in West Virginia as Vanessa Edwards under witness protection. Agent Tameika Washington (Quincy Tyler Bernstine) helped relocate them to Indiana and barred them from any contact with Tariq.
Show creator Courtney Kemp said she thinks Tariq and Tasha could be together again one day. But there will be complications.
“Tommy (Joseph Sikora) is going to make that difficult,” she told TVLine when asked for her thoughts on a Tariq and Tasha reunion. “He’s also got his own show. He’s busy, but he hasn’t forgotten any of what went down.”
One of the biggest gifts, Naturi says of her time with “Power” is her relationship with Omari Hardwick.
“Omari has become the big brother in my real life. Just a good person, a great actor. He made Ghost iconic from his walk, his suits, from his look, his skin; the man is fine, very fine but he is a good friend and to this day we talk and he’ll send me a voice note. He’s so proud of me. I’m so proud of him. Working with him was amazing and we started something being this power couple on television, on cable. It means the world to me,” she tells EURweb.com Spotlight.
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“Joe Sikora, me, Omari … we used to play pranks on each other. Little fun things-random things on set. To this day we all make jokes about Michael Rainey how did he get a mustache but don’t get it twisted, Tasha can still yoke him up. It’s just a family vibe. We had a good time.”
The “Power” series is renewed but the fate of ABC’s “Queens” is still up in the air. The series stars Naturi, Eve, Nadine Velazquez and Brandy as four ’90s hip-hop legends, now in their 40s, who reunite for a chance to recapture their fame. It came in No. 7 and last out of the eight dramas ABC has fielded this TV season.
Naturi loves the show: “I’m having a great time. The character Jill the Thrill is definitely struggling with her sexuality coming out as a lesbian on the BET awards. But she’s more than just that. She’s been in this girl group and lost a sense of self and doesn’t really know who she is and she’s doing it with some of her closest friends and reuniting after 20 years. That’s what “Queens” is about. No matter how much time has gone by. No matter how old you feel like you are, you can still live out your dreams. you are a queen and you deserve to feel like one,” Naturi says.
In some ways, it mirrors her real life with the girl group 3LW founded by Adrienne Bailon, Naturi and Kiely Williams. In an interview on the “Wendy Williams” radio show years ago, Naughton alleged that she had a number of conflicts with Bailon, Williams, and their management, which led to an August 2002 altercation involving a plate of food. Naughton later claimed that she was forced out of the group. Other rumors reported that one of the girls threw a chair at the other.
“lt was 22 years ago which is similar to the storyline in “Queens” she recalls. “But it was just not a healthy environment for me. And honestly going back to it is not what I want to do but I was very blessed to survive a very dysfunctional group situation. I’m just grateful to move forward with my life but thankfully, Thank God, I made it to become an actress, to get back to my music and I’m just excited my career has been able to span over 20 years. I am very very grateful.”
Now she is bringing her celebrity to promote health in the Black community with the American Heart Association (AHA)
“I am just very very excited to be able to use my celebrity for things like this. To have people look up to me. It means a lot to me That gives me joy. That gives me purpose.”
“I have teamed up with them to make sure we get our communities and our people aware first of their blood pressure and secondly what to do about it. One of the things that’s great is to make sure that we do movement (exercise). You can do self-measuring at home: get it, slip it, cuff it, check it which is the 4 steps to this awesome movement. Talk to your doctor and share your numbers. One of the things that made me excited is there are ways you can manage your blood pressure and dancing and movement is one of the ways you can do that.” There is a dance that Naturi and AHA created to underscore the message to check your blood pressure.
“I’m challenging all of you guys. This is a dance movement. Get the people that you know older, young no matter what age you can upload your video to your social media. Make sure you hashtag #getdownwithyourbp.”
You can check out the full convo and watch Naturi rock that dance in the video at the top. And please don’t forget to subscribe to Jaz’s YouTube channel.
Interview/article by Jazmyn Summers. Follow her @jaztalk1 on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Video editing by www.patrickhousefilms.com
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