Cheyenne Floyd is reflecting on her first season of ‘Teen Mom OG’, stating that the show’s fan base did not accept her for a while, due to the fact that she was the first Black girl on the show. Cheyenne claimed that the show’s fans were often cruel because they hadn’t seen someone like her on a reality show before. 

During a recent appearance on Against All Odds with Yris Palmer, Cheyenne— who joined the cast of ‘Teen Mom OG’ in 2018— called her first season on the show “awful.”

“[The fans] were not accepting because, number one, I was not a teen mom. I fully own that,” Cheyenne– who gave birth to her first child at age 24–said. “And, number two, I was the first person of color to join this cast that has been all white, basically. And I don’t think the audience was ready to see a person of color that did not come from an underprivileged background.

Cheyenne appeared on ‘Are You The One?’ and ‘The Challenge’ before getting the gig on ‘Teen Mom OG’ but those shows didn’t focus on Chey’s home life like ‘Teen Mom OG’ did, causing fans to be surprised by what they saw during Cheyenne’s segments.

“I think that reality TV for brown people, we’re pulling each other’s hair out; we’re arguing,” she said. “We’ve come from the mud. Like, those are the stories that are highlighted, where I came from a different story. I grew up in private school. My parents have always done well. I’m very educated…”

“I just don’t think they were ready to see that,” Cheyenne added. “And [fans] were like, ‘You shouldn’t be here because you don’t come from struggle.’ But there was other girls on ‘Teen Mom’ that also didn’t come from struggle, but they just didn’t look like me. So, it was accepting of them but not of me.”

Cheyenne said she initially signed on to do reality TV because it was “a fun way to make money,” but she eventually realized that she could use the platform to represent something she felt was missing from TV.

“I can actually use my voice and make a difference and show that there are beautiful black families that are full of love and that, you know, there’s a whole other side to what is not being shown on reality TV,” she said. “So, then I was like, ‘OK, now I feel like I have more of a purpose,” Cheyenne said, adding that she purposely tried to insert issues each season that she wanted to highlight.

Still, Cheyenne says that she was not ready for the harsh criticism she would receive from ‘Teen Mom’ fans.

“I wish that when I signed up to do ‘Teen Mom’ that I had more information,” she said. “I really think that I was not mentally prepared of what it entailed. I also feel like I wasn’t prepared from the standpoint of comments and, like, negative energy that would be thrown towards me. I don’t think I was prepared for that. And then I think I made a lot of rookie mistakes. Like, we showed our house, the outside of our house.”

Cheyenne said that it was normal for the girls’ home exteriors to be featured on the show, but it caused a problem for her because she lived in a big city.

“The other girls were OK doing that because— and no offense to them— they live in the middle of bum nowhere,” Cheyenne said.

“We live in the city of LA. So now I put almost like a target on my back with showing my house,” she added. “It was just too easy for people to find us and they had too much accessibility to us.”

Cheyenne said that, during the first seasons on the show, she would be devastated by the negative comments written about her on social media.

“In the beginning I read the comments. They crippled me,” she said. “There would be days where I could not get out of the bed…”

“Like, I was crippled to it,” she added. “So I went to therapy and therapy helped.”

Cheyenne said, at one point, the negative comments got so bad that her mom and sister R Kyle Lynn would log onto her social media pages before she could.

“They would go through and block and delete stuff so that I wouldn’t even see it,” she said.

Now, Cheyenne said that she is less affected by what is said about her on social media.

“My biggest thing is I care about what my family thinks about me. I care about if I’m a good friend,” she said. “I can’t care about Suzy Q in Oklahoma that’s mad at me for whatever reason.”

Cheyenne went on to say that fans of reality TV often forget that the people they are watching are real.

“I think that, especially with social media today, we’re almost treated like a product, as opposed to, like, a human being.”

You can watch Cheyenne’s full interview with Yris below. 

RELATED STORY: Cory Wharton Says He & Taylor Selfridge Are Now “On the Same Page” About Their Relationship: “We Both Want This Family to Work”

(Photos: YouTube, MTV)