Leah Messer has something to say, folks.
As part of a revealing feature about her in Teen Vogue, the former Teen Mom 2 cast member says MTV executives should never have kept the cameras rolling once her dangerous drug addiction became apparent on air.
“You can see me high. Cut the cameras,” Messer in this article, which was published on June 22.
“You can see me falling asleep or whatever. Cut the cameras and immediately do an intervention … instead of using it for the benefit of TV and drama.”
Messer has been open over the years after her past struggles.
In her memoir, Hope, Grace & Faith, Leah wrote that she suffered a “botched” spinal tap in 2013 when she had a C-section with daughter Addie.
The resulting pain sent her down this unfortunate path.
On a podcast in 2020, Messer even admitted to trying heroin at one point.
“I was buying it off the streets, I was doing very illegal activities. It was a spiral downhill from there,” Leah said three years ago.
“I was taking ridiculous amounts of prescription medication. I remember it leading into smoking the pills, it led me to try heroin.”
On Teen Mom 2, viewers witnessed Leah nodding off while holding her newborn niece many years ago… and they also watched in shock when Messer mumbled about “dye in the baby’s head” during a drugged-up phone call with her daughter’s nurse.
Disturbing stuff.
According to this Teen Vogue profile, Messer could not recall a time when the camera crew stopped filming “an obviously high young mother as she struggled to take care of her children.”
Producers did, however, help Leah get professional help in 2015.
The mother of three acknowledges as much in the magazine, stating it was a producer from the program who pushed her to go to the rehab back in the day after he viewed concerning footage of her driving.
“It’s bittersweet, because I probably wouldn’t have been able to get the help I had without [MTV], so I thank them,” Leah told the outlet, adding that she feels the producers and network still could have taken action without putting it on camera.
“It’s also like, damn, something could have been done differently, without a shadow of a doubt,” she added.
This may be accurate, but Messer credited the network in 2020 with turning her life around.
“My kids wouldn’t have a mom had it not been for also MTV and [my manager at the time] Lindsay Reilly,” Leah said at the time.
Messer is the mother of 13-year-old twin daughters Aliannah and Aleeah with ex-husband Corey Simms; along with 10-year-old daughter Adalynn with second ex-husband Jeremy Calvert.
She’s dealing with some pretty serious financial concerns at the moment, which might explain why she spoke to Teen Vogue and why she’s trying to garner some headlines via this interview.
In a statement to Teen Vogue, an unnamed Teen Mom 2 producer said the show’s crew members followed the “principles of documentary filmmaking,” adding for the record:
“We document, we don’t intervene.”