Key Takeaways
- Gabourey Sidibe confronted Raven-Symoné on Tea Time with Raven & Miranda about years of cold interactions, telling her, “You treated me like you didn’t like me!”
- Raven acknowledged keeping Sidibe at a distance and admitted jealousy over Hollywood’s embrace of the Precious star after facing body-size rejection herself.
- Sidibe challenged the comparison between their body types, while Raven recalled designers refusing to dress her and acknowledged carrying “a lot of chips” on her shoulders.
Gabourey Sidibe did not come to Raven-Symoné’s podcast to pretend their history was warm. During a recent appearance on Tea Time with Raven & Miranda, the Precious star confronted Raven over years of icy interactions and secondhand stories. “Girl, I didn’t think you liked me,” Sidibe said.
When Raven asked why, Sidibe answered without hesitation: “Because you treated me like you didn’t like me!”
Sidibe said that impression was not built on one uncomfortable moment. She remembered Raven appearing “put off” by her during a dinner in Chicago and said mutual acquaintances later brought back a far messier claim.
“I was told that you made some people promise to not be friends with me,” Sidibe said, as the podcast censored the names she mentioned. “I was told that you made some folks promise not to be friends with me.”
Raven did not admit to ordering anyone to choose sides, but she did not deny keeping Sidibe at a distance. After connecting some of the tension to their time around Empire, where Raven guest-starred in 2015, she offered a quick “my bad.”
Her wife and co-host, Miranda Maday, said Raven wasn’t the type to police other people’s friendships, though she could come across as cold. Raven then revealed what she might have said instead: “Don’t bring her around me.”
The bigger admission followed. Raven said Sidibe’s rise after her Oscar-nominated performance in 2009’s Precious stirred up jealousy because Hollywood embraced a body type it had rejected on her. “I remember when you came on the scene, and you were embraced, and I was like, wow, I’m not, she is,” Raven told her.
She described feeling grateful that Sidibe was “knocking down doors” while also feeling “angry” that the same acceptance had never been extended to her.
Sidibe pushed back on the comparison. “You’ve never been fat, and that is what bugs me,” she said. “Because you had big boobs. That’s different than being plus.” Raven countered that her size fluctuated between 10 and 16 and said designers refused to dress her during her child-star years, leaving her to buy her own red-carpet looks.
That rejection also shaped decisions with lasting consequences: Raven recently revealed that adults pressured her into a breast reduction at 15 after suggesting it could help her land a show. She underwent liposuction at the same time because she hoped people would stop calling her fat.
By the end of the conversation, the two women were laughing, but Raven did not rewrite the past. She acknowledged carrying “a lot of chips” on her shoulders, while Sidibe finally received confirmation that the coldness she felt was real.
