Cynthia Bailey, 53, made one thing clear while calling in for the Jan. 7 episode of The Wendy Williams Show. Her daughter Noelle Robinson, 21, did not come out on The Real Housewives of Atlanta in 2019 because her mom supposedly “needed a more interesting storyline than the happy married lady,” which Wendy Williams suggested on Thursday’s episode.
“Noelle is not a Housewife…she does not actually have to share her life with you guys,” Cynthia clarified during the interview. The Bravo star later added, “Let me just say this, this is really important. The reason I really wanted Noelle to tell her story on the show is because as a reality star family at this point, if we don’t talk about it on the show and people find out about it, they almost feel like we’re hiding it.”
“I didn’t want Noelle to feel ashamed and embarrassed or have to hide her truth,” Cynthia continued, who feared that someone could easily snap a photo of Noelle out “walking around holding hands with a girl” that could end up on The Shade Room. Cynthia wanted Noelle to take charge of her narrative instead.
“I wanted her to tell her own story,” Cynthia said. “It wasn’t for my storyline. It was because she needed to get in front.”
Noelle came out as sexually fluid on the Nov. 2019 of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, after starting her freshman year at Howard University. “People try to box everyone in and put labels on everything, but I don’t really do that. That’s just what it is. There’s a lot of attractive guys, and there’s a lot of attractive girls,” Noelle told her famous mom, and Wendy even gushed over Cynthia’s accepting reaction after the episode had aired. Cynthia later recalled why the moment was so “powerful” in an EXCLUSIVE interview with HollywoodLife in June of 2020.
Noelle became Instagram official with YouTuber Alexis Powell in March of 2020. However, they have since broken up; Cynthia’s daughter revealed that she had been “single” for a “few months” in a YouTube video uploaded by December of that year.