Hollywood Exes: How Did Mayte Garcia Meet Prince? Who Stole From Nicole Murphy?
Hollywood Exes premiered this week and, as someone who watched out of boredom, it was admittedly entertaining.
The VH1 reality show that got much of its pre-premiere publicity from signing Dina Lohan in cameo has aired its pilot and second episode. The show felt a little more “real” and slightly less-contrived than shows of its ilk like Basketball Wives. The former is clearly still staged, replete with “guided conversations,” of course, and it’s produced and edited. But some of the conversations were so erratic, hysteric, and incomprehensible it’s hard to imagine every situation was staged that way. It feels a little more organic, a lot more about the exes than BW, with slightly more a likable cast.
* Mayte Garcia, 38, is the Puerto Rican and Egyptian ex-wife of musician Prince, 54. She and Prince had a child together named Boy Gregory on October 16, 1996 who lived for one week. The couple had their marriage annulled in 2000, on their third anniversary.
* Andrea Kelly is the ex-wife of singer R. Kelly, 45; his former backing dancer and his children’s mother (Joann, Jaya, and Robert Jr). She is incomprehensible, very excitable, says “You betta check yo’ email!” too often, and she was kept hidden as a wife for over a decade. They divorced in 2009, after 12 years of marriage.
* Sheree Fletcher, née Sheree Zampino, is the ex-wife of actor Will Smith, with whom they share eldest son Willard Christopher Smith III, known as “Trey.” The couple married in 1992 and divorced in 1995.
* Nicole Murphy (GORGEOUS), née Nicole Mitchell, 44, is the ex-wife of actor Eddie Murphy. They have five children together: Bria L. Murphy, Myles Mitchell, Shayne Audra, Zola Ivy, and Bella Zahra. They divorced in 2006, after 13 years together.
* Jessica Canseco, née Jessica Sekely, is the ex-wife of former baseball player Jose Canseco; the only husband extensively featured in the show in person because, admittedly, he’s broke with not much else going on after his career backslide following a steroids controversy.
Garcia spoke on the show about her marriage, her late son, and her friendship with Prince’s second wife.
Garcia recalls how she and Prince met, in an interview from 2006: “My dad showed him a video of me dancing and Prince asked to meet me,” Prince was 32, Garcia was 16, they would later meet backstage (her Wiki says her “her mother, Nelle, submitted the tape”). “My first thought was, ‘Wow, he’s really… small!’ It came as a surprise, because he’s got such a huge presence on stage.”
She continued: “Looking back, it was a bit surreal. I didn’t tell many of my friends because they wouldn’t have believed me. It was all quite innocent, but quite intense.” She toured with him after graduating high school when she was 17, with her family’s permission, and she became very involved in his music even becoming the inspiration for 1992′s Love Symbol album.
They married Valentines Day 1996, when she was 22-years-old and Prince was 37, she fell pregnant two months later. They had their son soon after, although he passed from Pfeiffer syndrome (a genetic disorder skull defect).
Asked about the Oprah interview, filmed after the death, where they spoke as if their son were alive (from around 5:24 in the video including a tour of the playroom), Garcia explained: “We believed he was going to come back, that souls come back. We didn’t want to acknowledge he was gone, it was our way of grieving. Losing a baby is a terrible thing. Some couples are brought closer together after the loss of a child, others are driven apart; in our case the latter happened.”
Also featured heavily on the show is Eddie Murphy’s ex-wife, Nicole Murphy. During the episode, she talks about having $7 million stolen and perusing her legal options even though, she conjectured, most people would be “too embarrassed.” But who stole the money? Murphy was allegedly defrauded by Troy David Stratos, 45, an “entertainment entrepreneur” based in Los Angeles.
Stratos was arrested on December 20, 2011 for 11 charges of wire and mail fraud, for which he could face 20 years in prison, and two counts of money laundering and one count of obstruction of justice, for which he faces 10 years.
Allegedly, Stratos planned to “invest the money overseas” to earn interest, but he spent Murphy’s money on himself. And, while Murphy was living elsewhere, Stratos instructed her to purchase luxury cars to stage a home he was supposed to sell, potentially to Middle Eatern royalty. Instead, he lived in the home rent-free and drove those cars.
PHOTO CREDIT – VH1 HOLLYWOOD EXES
