Did an allegation almost get Sister Wives canceled?
In the past, Mykelti Brown has put Meri on blast. But she has also minced her words more than some of her siblings have.
Now, she's opening up about the backlash that she received from some of her own family.
It sounds like she was presented with a choice: walk back her accusation that Meri was "abusive," or watch the family's TLC paychecks disappear.
There's one topic that she basically can't safely discuss
During her recent appearance on The Sarah Fraser Show, Mykelti received an interesting question.
Which of her past videos proved to be the most incendiary with her family?
It was not a difficult question to answer.
A couple of years ago, she and her husband discussed Meri Brown in a Patreon video.
What did she say about Meri? Mykelti plead: "I can't say the word because I'll get flamed for it."
"So I'm going to say it without saying it," Mykelti announced. "At the beginning of our Patreon, I [said] a word that Meri did to us kids."
She continued: "And because of that word, it caused a ton of backlash and a ton of negative stuff and we got in, like, severe trouble [with] family [and] other people."
Mykelti recalled: "Like, it was like, 'Don't say that word, 'cause the word can completely end the entire show, it could end all of our income, it could make investigations happen."
She added: "Because that word in 2024 means something different than it did in 2009 [or] in the 2000s."
Apparently, not so different. Because Sister Wives is still on, Meri is still a free woman and collecting TLC paychecks. The world — or, at least, the people who make decisions — don't actually seem to care about children. Or about justice.
She's talking about when she described Meri as abusive
Still without using the term, Mykelti said that she was admonished that she needed to use "a lot more context" when employing the term.
She could, conceivably, have needed to give an affidavit based upon her term. (But, again, seemingly no legal action actually manifested.)
"So that word, I said it once, and I explained it a tiny bit — but not enough," Mykelti explained.
Even so, that was enough to get her scolded by some of her own family for simply describing her own childhood.
That is actually extremely common, even for families where no reality show exists, when someone accuses a parent or other relative of being abusive.
In January 2023, Mykelti described Meri as having been "abusive" towards her and to other children in the Brown family.
(Oddly, she would later claim that Meri's alleged cruelty to her was in the form of emotional and verbal abuse, a statement that may have come after the family scolding — and which does not match up with what her siblings have said.)
In 2019, Maddie had made a series of tweets that implied the Meri was "abusive" and a "monster."
Paedon Brown also accused Meri of abuse, echoing and supporting his siblings' claims.
And while he and Gwendlyn don't agree on much, she described Meri as "violent" and backed up the claim that Meri seemed to single out Mykelti in particular.
Fear of legal complications and economic suffering keeps a lot of people silent
In general, it's legally safer for Mykelti to trash-talk Meri without getting specific.
You can talk about someone being an unpalatable disgrace with whom you'd never willingly interact without getting specific about their alleged actions.
But it's also terrible that Mykelti clearly did not feel at liberty to openly discuss her own lived experiences growing up in her own family.
As we acknowledged, she is not alone. Countless children and adults find themselves treated as if they were the problem when they simply acknowledge how much a parent or other relative failed them — or worse.
Even without the apparent threat that Sister Wives money could dry up for everyone, this culture of silence is a generational curse that protects the worst people among us and forces victims to keep silent.
Mykelti Brown: I Got in 'Severe Trouble' for Calling Meri Abusive! was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.
