*The drama-filled reality show “Black Ink Crew New York” returns for a 10th landmark season tomorrow (October 18th) on VH1 roiled by the firing of its main character franchise founder and Black Ink owner Ceaser Emanuel.
VH1 said it severed ties with Ceasar after a video surfaced earlier this year showing him allegedly abusing a dog. The question of what’s next now looms over the cast.
Ceaser, who turned himself into authorities, was charged with two misdemeanor charges of animal cruelty and one felony charge of aggravated cruelty to animals.
Two of Ceaser’s oldest friends Teddy ‘Ruks’ (Shariff Homer) and Puma (Paul Robinson) sit down with iHeart radio personality and EURweb Spotlight host Jazmyn Summers. Warning spoiler alerts ahead.
WHAT DID YOU THINK WHEN YOU SAW THE VIDEO?
Ted: when I saw the video, I asked him, ‘what were you thinking my brother?’ There’s no excuses. He was definitely 100% wrong. And as soon as I saw it, I called him and said you know what might happen after this? And he just looked at me and he said I know. I’m sorry. I turned my phone off to not deal with everything that was going on in the media and to try to wrap my head around what happened. And I’m still dealing with that
Puma: It’s very unfortunate what happened. And accountability is important. Caesar knows he was wrong. We all know what he did was wrong.
EUR fam. Do you think he’s guilty? Watch the video and judge for yourself.
HOW DOES BLACK INK MOVE FORWARD WITHOUT CEASAR WHO OWNS THE FRANCHISES AND IS SUCH A CENTRAL PART OF BLACK INK’S STORY?
Puma: The whole mishap happened after we had filmed most of the season. So you’re gonna see Caesar throughout the season, But we have to keep pushing forward. The Black Ink brand is not just about one individual, it’s about the large collective. . So we just keep pushing the brand forward. We’re very upset by the whole situation, but it is what it is.
Ted: We were deep into filming when the incident happened. So he’s definitely still a part of it in that sense. Watching the trailer and going into a new season it’s really starting to hit home that he’s really not a part of it anymore.
WHEN YOU LOOK AT WILL SMITH OR OTHER FOLKS WHO MADE MISTAKES, THEY STILL COME BACK AFTER THE CONTROVERSY FADES. EVEN WITH BLACK INK THEY HAVE HIM IN MOST OF THE SEASON EVEN THOUGH THEY CLAIM THAVE CUT TIES. DO YOU THINK THAT WILL HAPPEN WTH CEASER?
Puma: We can’t predict the future, but the way it’s looking right now. We are gonna just keep pushing forward.
Ted: We’re all intelligent black men. We’re all very business minded. Puma actually runs his own business. So we know how to handle and run businesses. So things are gonna operate the same way they was. Unfortunately, you won’t see Ceaser on camera anymore. But as Puma said, everything must continue. We have over 10 shops. We had plans on opening five by the end of the year. We’re still gonna push forward with everything that we were doing.
WHO DO YOU THINK LEAKED THE VIDEO AND WHY? THE RUMOUR IS IT WAS AN EX-GIRLFRIEND. DO WE FIND OUT IN SEASON 10?
Ted: I have no idea.
Puma: They don’t show us anything. We watch the show as fans just like everybody else. So at eight o’clock Tuesday night, I’m definitely sitting in front of my TV to see what’s going on even though I am a part of Black Ink Crew. I gotta watch Ted’s story. I wanna watch Alex’s story,
PUMA YOUR LONG NINE-YEAR MARRIAGE TO QUANI GETS A LITTLE ROCKY IN THIS SEASON. SHE SAYS SHE’S FRUSTRATED ABOUT NOT BEING ABLE TO DO HER AND HAVE HER OWN LIFE. WHAT’S GOING ON?
Well, we’ve been together for 12 years. Married nine. It gets to a point in your life when you’re just so focused on giving to your family that sometimes you forget how they feel about what you’re giving. I understand her frustration. I want her to have her own and be her own person. Sometimes you don’t wanna be just known as Puma’s wife. She’s about pushing for herself and it’s going really well. I’m very happy for Quani. I like where she’s progressing in life right now. it’s good she’s taking off.
YOU AND QUANI SEEM TO HAVE FOUND THE KEY TO WORKING THROUGH THINGS, DO YOU THINK YOU’VE INSPIRED OTHER BLACK COUPLES?
Puma: I’m still trying to fix mine LOL. But I’m glad that some people get the understanding that it’s not just flowers and roses and happy-go-lucky all the time. Things happen. Can you survive through it?
WE SEE YOU SHATTERED WHEN YOU DISCOVER YOUR SON HAS AUTISM.
Puma: When I first heard it, it was the fear of the unknown Having one of your children have this is scary at first. But then as I talked to other people and got to a real understanding, even just our conversation before this happened about Elon Musk being on the spectrum and so many other people on the spectrum, it’s making me more at ease with the whole situation. They’re probably much smarter than what we even imagine.
TED YOUR BROTHER WAS LOCKED UP WHEN YOU WERE JUST 10 AND YOU HAVEN’T SEEN HIM FOR 28 YEARS EVEN THOUGH HE GOT OUT THREE YEARS AGO. WAS IT THE PAIN OF LOSING HIM THAT KEPT YOU AWAY SO LONG?
It’s exactly what you said. It was very painful. I also have a younger brother who’s presently serving a sentence in prison. So it was like the me just growing up in the prison system. I stayed away from going to see my brother. Because as a young teen, as a young man, going into the prison system, it does something to you. Whether you’re behind the bars or you’re going to visit. When you’re going on a visit, they treat you as if you’re behind bars. There’s no difference between you and the inmate once you step foot into that jail . It’s a lot for a teenager.
RESEARCH SHOWS THAT BLACK MEN ARE OVER-ARRESTED, OVERCHARGED, AND OVER INCARCERATED YOU TALK ABOUT THE GUILT YOU FELT AND SURVIVOR’S REMORSE. HOW ARE YOU DEALING WITH THAT NOW?
Ted: During the pandemic, I had time to sit down and really focus on a lot. My life was moving at a very fast pace. I didn’t really get a chance to sit down and reflect on a lot of things before. And during the pandemic when the world stopped, it was like, wow, it’s been eight years I’ve been doing this (the show) and worried about myself. And I realized I need to make a stronger connection with those people – my family. I had to stop making excuses for it. Before it was, oh, I’m busy or I’m doing this, or I’m doing that. But if I could make time for anything, it should definitely be family. So now we’re both grown men. and we are trying to mend the relationship and learn from each other. It’s crazy, I know Puma better than I know my own brother.
Now I visit my younger brother. When he went in we were filming Black Ink so I was able to provide for him in a lot of different ways. Our relationship is very different than the relationship with my older brother being in jail. But it’s a lot of weight on me because I’m the middle child and I’m the only that’s out here trying to succeed and do the right thing and also keep my family together, provide for my mother, and provide for everybody around me. So it’s a lot. It gets heavy at times, but I’d rather do this than do anything else with my life. I always say, I never know where I would be right now if it wasn’t for that tattoo shop.
YOU GOT MARRIED AND KEPT IT ON THE LOW BUT IN THIS SEASON YOU PUT YOUR ROMANCE WITH YOUR WIFE EUNI ON BLAST WHY DID YOU KEEP IT HIDDEN FOR SO LONG?
We became official around 2018 but we met two or three years before that. It was just having a sense of some type of privacy. Euni is my baby, she was my privacy so I kept her away from the cameras for a very long time. But as we learned filming this TV show, this TV show’s about our lives. So there’s no way I can take pictures with her and then you don’t see her as a part of my life on the television show. Production was very lenient with me about it but they worked with me a lot. And then we finally got to a point where I felt I can bring her and really not have to worry about anything.
SO YOU WERE A PLAYER BUT NO MORE?
I was. When the cameras first came around, that was my life. I was the player I was running around. I just really had no sense of direction, I was just living my life. But then as you get older, you start to realize like, wait, I need to slow down a little bit. And then with Puma being married for so long. I was there from day one. Puma has showed me the life. He’s definitely an inspiration. It’s like, if Puma could do it, I could definitely do it, Bt when he first got married I was like ‘married, like who gets married? Nobody gets married. That’s a fantasy. Married I’ll never be married ‘and now look at me and I’m happy.
IN THIS SEASON, CEASER GOES IN ON BOTH OF YOU. HE GIVES TED THE AWARD FOR COUCH SITTER AND PUMA FOR BEING A PARTY BOY AND ACCUSES YOU OF NOT DOING WHAT YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO AT THE SHOP. WASSUP WITH THAT?
Ted: We’re all brothers and as brothers we go through a lot and Ceaser is like the old, big brother. So there’s a lot of tough love when it comes to him. There’s always a reason behind what he did. Like he was hard on us about stepping up and handling business and doing the things we need to do. Even if it came from a place where he’s calling me out saying I’m on the couch, you’re not doing this and you are not doing that. He instilled in me that I need to step it up a lot more and look where we are now.
Puma: I don’t think we take it as shade. We take it as our jokes, and how we push each other.
YOU ALL ARE THE OGS AND HAVE BEEN WITH BLACK INK THE LONGEST WITH CEASER. HOW DID IT CHANGE YOUR LIFE AND YOUR POCKETS? ARE YOU REALLY WORTH MILLIONS?
Ted: Not sure about that but Black Ink has definitely provided a way for everyone to take care of family and basically it got us all out of the streets, right? Like we’re all from the Bronx. It’s one of the roughest boroughs in New York City.
Puma: Yes. And we made it out. And we can provide for others, which is an amazing thing. 10 years;
This season Young Bae reconnects with herself as a mother, woman, and artist. While taking on the new task of becoming a mentor at the shop, Newly single, Alex is feeling reborn and is no longer letting anyone or anything hold him back on his life journey and is embracing the sex symbol status that his fans have crowned him with and self-proclaimed “Black Ink” royalty, Spyder is back better than ever! After dealing with an extreme health scare last year, he is refocused back on health, wealth, and legacy for himself and his family.
And Puma says ” We are definitely pushing the limits this season. We’re gonna do a few things that most common Black folks don’t be doing on their everyday basis.”
You can catch the full conversation in the video at the top of the page. And please don’t forget to subscribe to Jazmyn Summers’ youtube.
Edited for brevity
Interview/article by Jazmyn Summers. Follow her @jaztalk1 on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.
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 and Puma (Paul Robinson) sit down with iHeart radio personality and EURweb Spotlight host Jazmyn Summers.){kind=link}