Alana and Annette were the second mother-daughter team to be eliminated from the CW’s newest reality show, Crowned: The Mother of All Pageants. Hailing from Hayward, California, Alana, 19, and her mother Annette, 44, wanted to compete in the pageant show to have some fun and embark on an adventure. Unfortunately, their adventure ended this Wednesday when their exercise routine failed to impressed the judges.
However, throughout their two weeks in the competition, they proved to be one of the more genuine and likeable teams on the show. Alana and Annette spoke to BuddyTV and revealed that at least one-half of their team new all along what “Silent But Deadly” actually means. Below, you’ll find an audiofile and a complete transcript of the interview.
Hi everybody, this is Debbie from BuddyTV, and I’m talking to Alana and Annette from Crowned. Why did you want to be on Crowned in the first place?
Alana: My mother and I were both kind of at a point in our lives where we needed a change. We needed to do something fun and just out there. Seeing an advertisement for the new reality show Crowned seemed like a perfect opportunity, because it targeted mothers and daughters. I have always been close to my mom, ever since I was a little girl, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity, the perfect excuse to get out of our normal routine, and embark on an adventure and possibly the opportunity of a lifetime.
What was your relationship like before the show, and did it change after your two weeks in the competition?
Annette: Alana’s my only child, so we’ve always, always been very close. We still live together, we share a home, and even though we’re kind of like the odd couple — I’m very clean, she’s very messy — somehow we manage.
Alana: I don’t like how you say that every time.
Annette: Somehow we’ve managed to just make it work, even though we have our differences. I guess it’s the love and the bond between us that makes it work. We went into this experience with that bond, and a couple of weeks into the show I would say there wasn’t any point during the show, in the first couple of weeks, where our bond was really shaken to the extreme where we were pulling away from each other. The whole experience, in my opinion, has brought us closer together. We learned more about each other than we probably wanted to, we have a better understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. I think it’s the challenge as the mother of an only child to kind of let go and let Alana take the lead sometimes, so it was a stretch there for us, but overall I think the whole experience has brought us closer together.
Alana: I agree with that. I feel that, on the show, my mother and I always get into these little tiffs regardless, so the little arguments that we had on the show was nothing major. I was a little bit shocked by the way that my mom handled the situation on the show, just seeing her in an environment that she didn’t have control of I could tell was kind of an issue for her. Seeing her kind of react to that was something I had never seen before. I was there for her, we talked about it, but I don’t think it shook our relationship up to the point where it was like, “I don’t want to be here with you mom, this was not a good idea.” It was never like that.
While you were living in the mansion, was there a lot of downtime? How did you spend your days when you weren’t doing challenges?
Annette: There was no downtime that I remember. We were on, I would say a really strict schedule, where every minute was timed and followed the flow of that day. Our days would start at like 7:30 in the morning and end at midnight. I was physically exhausted, just really physically exhausted. I didn’t see any downtime, did you Alana?
Alana: I did not notice any downtime. The only time I did have it was clear that I was asleep. I was sleeping every downtime we had, or eating. Sleeping or eating.
Annette: Yeah, we didn’t get enough to eat. We were constantly snacking all day because we were on the go. There wasn’t very much time for a sit down meal. We were lucky if we got one sit down meal a day.
So what did they have you doing all day?
Annette: Preparation for the challenges, getting dressed for those challenges, working out routines, and practicing for those challenges. In between that work schedule, we interviewed after everything, constantly, all throughout the day.
I have to ask you about last week’s challenge when you had to come up with a team name. What was going through your mind when you were in front of the judges and Carson said that your team name is a kind of fart?
Alana: The way that they edited that part made me really frustrated, because of course we knew that it meant a fart. I came up with it, I knew exactly what it meant.
Annette: I didn’t initially.
Alana: Hold on, let me finish, mom. I remember coming up with that name, and my mother and I, we are the biggest goofballs. We are constantly laughing, being silly, and I don’t know, just being crazy, just crazy silly all the time. The fact that I was thinking “Silent But Deadly,” of course I knew it was a silent fart that smells really bad, but that was to kind of show that we’re real. Yes, we know that it’s a fart, it’s just so our sense of humor to get a laugh out of some people. But also to have that double meaning behind it I thought, okay, that’s kind of cool. It’s funny, but it also shows that we are silent in the competition because we don’t have any experience, but we’re going to knock them dead because we are the best.
Annette: That’s Alana’s take. I had to buy into this. She really had to convince me, because I never wanted to go with that name.
Alana: That’s not true.
Annette: Alana, let me have my say. I disagreed with that, and when we were negotiating throughout the time when we had to create a name, I really hesitantly went along with that because the whole challenge for me was to relinquish my control. I believed the daughters had control. So I went with that, and initially I liked the wording. It really didn’t dawn on me at the time when I agreed okay, let’s go with this versus “Sophisticated Ladies,” what the moniker was. It didn’t hit me until later that evening, when someone else brought it up to me and said “Do you know what that means?” Then I’m like oh my God, because it had a familiar ring to it for me, but I really didn’t put it together when we actually made the decision. I don’t regret it. I think it had some punch to it, and the way Alana explains it, I totally agree that it fit who we were inside of the house — silent but deadly. But if I initially knew what the moniker stood for, I would have challenged her a bit harder to go for a different name, which we did change in the end to “The Realists.”
Who did you think was your biggest competition among the other teams?
Alana: I didn’t really feel that we had a competition in the house. I really didn’t feel threatened by anybody. Although, because we were one of the African-American teams, I guess I kind of felt that we had to be the better one out of the two. Just because, I don’t know, I feel like we should have been the better black team on the show. But I never really felt there was anybody in the house that was better. We were all so different, so it was hard to tell in the beginning what the judges were looking for, and what they had in mind. So it was just like okay, everyone’s different, we’ll just have to see how things go. But I did kind of want to be the better team out of the two black teams, I must say.
Annette: I agree with Alana. I went in believing we all had an equal opportunity or shot at winning the crown, based on how well we did in the challenges. I was like okay, it’s equal footing here. But I too felt the tension between the other African-American mother-daughter team, for us to be our best selves around them.
Another thing I noticed, in last night’s episode particularly, is that there was that tension that was building in the house with the two big cliques. Did that start right away? How did that form?
Annette: I think it did start right away, from the very first day when we had the first opportunity to meet and greet the other teams. It appeared that some of the other mother-daughter teams had maybe known each other from a different experience or something like that. We really went in not knowing anyone, but we could tell that maybe a few of the other teams had some familiarity with each other. So the division, with that alone, started immediately.
Alana: I agree with that completely. I swear that the first day, evil went with evil and positive went with positive. It was like a magnet, I just knew exactly who I would gravitate towards and who I didn’t want to be around. It was immediate. That first day, when we went into the house and saw where we were living, you could just feel the vibe, and who was fake, and who I didn’t want to be around, and the people who I did want to spend most of my time with.
What did you think of some of the other teams?
Annette: As the mature one of the team here–
Alana: Wow.
Annette: Because I’m older than you, I’m your mother! That’s not an insult or anything. I’m going to come from the point of view of a mother, I felt that some of the other moms, their maturity levels and their behavior was less than that of role models. To be around their own daughters, I would think that there would be some boundaries around their own behaviors, just for the sake of being role models for their daughters. Set the example, that’s something that I’ve always tried to do with my daughter. True to being myself, yeah I’m human, I have a temper, I get upset, I have hormones, I’m a woman, and I have all that competitive energy inside of me as well. But when you’re in a situation with your child, it seems like a mother is always trying, or wants to be a good role model for that child. I just see a lot of mothers in this competition that really weren’t handling themselves in that way.
Do you have an example?
Annette: Well, I won’t mention any names, but there was more than one virtue of the mother-daughter teams where the verbal exchanges between them was more than disrespectful. The daughters would say “Get out of my face,” or use profanity and put-downs toward their own mothers. I saw it more that way than the other way. The mothers, to me, were talking…well, here’s an example: I think I saw some of the mothers go at the daughters of other teams. When we handle conflict as mothers, usually it’s adult-to-adult, one-on-one, you don’t approach someone else’s child to resolve an issue. I saw some of the mothers attacking some of the daughters rather than go one on one with the parent. That was interesting.
Alana: I noticed that as well, but I kind of thought it was interesting how the daughters were attacking some of the other mothers. I’ve been raised to be respectful to everybody, and it’s interesting that people kept telling me that I was poised and very mature. I feel like that there’s no other way I should be. I shouldn’t be immature and disrespectful to people for no reason, even if I am upset. It’s inappropriate. Some of these daughters, talking to other people’s mothers and their mothers…I mean, of course I play around with my mom, and sometimes I am disrespectful, but not to the point where it’s just like unbelievably wrong. I noticed that and I thought that was inappropriate.
Well thank you so much, both of you, for taking the time to talk to me.
Annette: Actually, just about BuddyTV, my daughter is a big fan. Until Alana’s just all over the tech savvy stuff. But we love BuddyTV. We’ve received a lot of links, I know you had one advertisement about the show with voting of the numbers for the Crowned contestants. It was very popular for us with our friends, calling us and telling us “Oh, it was on BuddyTV, and we voted for you and we thought you looked great.” Thank you for what you did for Crowned.
Well, I think it’s such a fun show to watch, and thanks so much again.
Alana and Annette: Thank you.
-Interview conducted by Debbie Chang
(Image courtesy of The CW)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
