Angel Brinks Spills the Dirt on Her Five-Year Anniversary Party and the Drama with Jackie's Dress

Angel Brinks first rose to stardom as a designer whose dresses are worn by many of your faves, but her reality TV debut came on Basketball Wives LA, starting with her friendship with Draya Michele. This season, Angel has dug her heels into the ground and even brought her own friend Angel Love to the court. VH1 caught up with Angel Brinks about her friendship with Jackie, the drama surrounding her dress, and where she stands today with her daughter's father, Tyreke Evans.

It seemed like in between seasons, you and Jackie had formed a friendship. How did that come to be?

Angel Brinks: Jackie and I grew a friendship after season [four], and we talked a lot. She kind of helped me understand how certain things are, and we talked about relationships and she got to understand me a little bit more and understand more of my situation with Tyreke. Jackie just wanted to help and we would talk a lot and we just established a friendship and when it came down to Angel Love coming around, she was a little wary about it but I told her that she’s a good person and she’s funny and Jackie's just like, "Okay, well, let’s do it. I’d love to meet her."

Your five-year anniversary party was a huge event, were you worried about your real life party being ruined by the Basketball Wives LA cameras?

It definitely was real, I’ll tell you that. A lot of people think a lot of reality shows are scripted and this and that but our show, definitely, one hundred percent is real. Every emotion, everything that we go through is really real.

For me, I custom-make dresses [and] it’s very important that everyone is satisfied. Satisfying Jackie, for me, was very stressful, because I tried my hardest with her and I just feel like sometimes we bump heads on situations. I wasn’t sure what was gonna happen with that. I believe there were some conversations that were said about me, and it would get back to me but I tried not to let that bother me. I’m the type of person that you need to say it to my face because I’m not gonna listen to what other people have to say that you said about me. I was confused when I first saw Jackie at the party, I really didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know if Jackie was just being just Jackie, or if she had too many drinks, or what happened. I really felt like my five-year anniversary was really big, a lot of businesses don’t make it past their first or second or third year and for me to have made it this far, I felt like it was very important to celebrate it. When I say celebrate, I mean celebrate it, I mean having everyone there that truly supports you and loves you and is proud of your accomplishments. When I got there, and realized that Jackie and Angel, who were the two closest to me were gone, I couldn’t understand why. I just felt like for once, I just wish that we could have all celebrated and they could have been happy for me and put whatever it was aside to celebrate with me. I really put so much money and so much hard work into that party, it was insane. Floyd Mayweather was there, Tyreke was there, my family was there, Lil' Kim, I mean everyone that was important who came. It was just really important for me to have it go smoothly. So to hear from so many different people that they thought it was either Jackie’s party or some people that didn’t know Jackie were just like, "Why was she just rapidly, crazily, running across the room?" Just to hear that was like, it kind of took from the party and the actual celebration itself. It really hurt me, a lot.

Let's talk about the former Basketball Wives LA cast members that were there: Brooke Bailey, Sundy Carter, Laura Govan, Draya, it was a mini-reunion. Was that on you, or did production put those people at the event?

No, I had hired an event publicist, and they basically reach out to all the publicists in the Hollywood area. I got the list of who to invite and there were a couple people who I said, "No, let’s not invite this person, because A) I don’t get along with them or B) they know Tyreke." So, I was just like, "I don’t want them there." I couldn’t help everyone that was invited, not that I had an issue really, but everyone’s entitled to bring somebody and it was a really big event. I mean the venue had anywhere from 300-500 people so you can’t always help who comes to the party and who does not. I obviously had my special list of people like Draya, Tyreke, Floyd Mayweather, Trina, and Lil' Kim. A lot of them play a big role in my life, so as friends we came together to celebrate.

When you saw Sundy was there and maybe some of the other people you don't know personally but have had reputations being on Basketball Wives were you like, "Uh-oh?!"

[Laughs] Actually, surprisingly enough, Sundy Carter has been a client of mine who was actually on Basketball Wives, and she's one of my friends. She just always orders dresses from me and orders come in a lot and she’s always been very supportive. I didn’t mind if she was there but I didn’t see her, she had left before I got there. I had heard after the fact that she was there.

But now everyone’s like, "Listen, Jackie really messed up your party, like you have to understand that." When I tell you I heard from so many people, they were like, "You just had to have been there, you just have to see it, it was that ugly." And I’m like, "What? Like, it was that bad?" [and they'll say,] "It was that bad. Like, I’d hate for you to have to see it but you would have to see it to know like how serious it was."

What was the deal with the Jackie's Bossard Cognac? We saw that you and Jackie had a conversation about her being a sponsor but then the logo wasn’t on the step and repeat and the Cognac was on the ground. What really happened with that?

Okay, truth be told, I’m just gonna be completely honest. I was talking to Jackie, obviously off-camera, because we have our conversations cause this is a real event. She was telling me, "You should bring this," and "You should have that," and we were talking and I said, "You know the event planners are the ones who are putting this all together, so I don’t know what’s going on." But I said, "I know you do have liquor, and I don’t know how you feel about this, I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but if you’re interested in having your liquor there I think it’d be really great for you because there’s gonna be a lot of media there." There were like 69 media outlets [at the party,] like, I thought that would be great for her. She said, "Oh, that would be great!" So, I said, "Okay, I’ll send over the sponsorship deck to you, I was like, "I’ll get it from the even planners" because I couldn’t do everything. Basically I sent her the sponsorship deck and she never responded. A couple days later, I asked my party planners if they had heard from her, they said they never heard from her, they said, "Would you like us to reach out to her?" I said, "Sure, go ahead."

So, come that weekend, I was like, "Jackie I told you if you want me to make you a dress you gotta come, you gotta do something." She was like, "Well, there’s a place where I get materials from, I’ll bring it over to you but they’re closed." I said, "Well, we’re approaching the date you gotta get it to me." So three says later, when she came to my store to help me with the models, I asked her, "Did you bring in the materials cause we’re literally a day and a half away?" Literally. And she said, "No, because I’m feeling like this and I’m feeling like that and I’m not happy with my weight." And I said, "Girl, who cares? We can make something that you’ll be happy in." So, we had our argument there and [then] I said to her, "You never responded to the sponsorship deck, are you gonna do anything?" And she’s like, "Yeah, I’ll bring everything." I was like, "Well, it’s a day and a half away, and if you wanna do anything, if you wanna be a sponsor, we need to know." We only wanted like four or five names on the step and repeat, and the ones that were on the step and repeat were all sponsors who paid to be on the step and repeat, as well as product. As my friend, I didn’t wanna ask [Jackie] for money and I knew that there was no more room on the step and repeat and it was a day and half away so I just said, "If you wanna do the liquor, bring the liquor, and put the logos on the TV screen. That’s basically what happened, I didn’t know what the issue was when she got there, I heard ten different stories, but apparently she was expecting more and I felt like, if you’re gonna be a sponsor, then she had to have abided by the sponsorship deck or have better communication with my party planners. There’s only so much I can do on my end, and my main focus was, dresses, the models, what I needed to pay for, or what needed to get done, not necessarily what sponsors have to do.

Did her logo really end up making it onto the TV screens?

Yes, absolutely. Yes. It just wasn’t on the step and repeat.

At the barbecue things were still pretty tense, do you feel like you and Jackie were able to resolve things?

At the barbecue, I felt like there was a lot I had to get off my chest. I had heard different things from different people, and I mainly wanted to talk to her about what I do know. I wasn’t expecting to see her, I didn’t know she was coming but I had a feeling I was just gonna blow up. I thought more because she was my friend she would have called me and we could have talked about it.

So there was no conversation between you and her like, off-camera, she didn’t call you or anything?

No. At all. At all. At all. So, for me, I was a little hurt. So, I’m seeing her [at the barbecue] and I’m just like, "I saw the dress that you ripped up. We only had a little bit of time to make it, and you just destroyed this beautiful dress that we worked so hard on. And it was like hard for me to see that." She not only destroyed it, but she destroyed it at the party like it was just like nothing to her. So, it was a lot of mixed emotions that happened that just kind of blew up because I hadn’t talked to her, and so when I saw her it was just so much I had to say. I wanted answers, I wanted to know why did you do this? Why did you do that? Was it that necessary? It felt good for me because I was able to get a lot off my chest and tell her how I feel, and I think that’s what a lot of the girls were always saying for me to do so I took their advice.

My last question, you mentioned that your daughter's father was at the event, where do things stand between you guys today?

It's such a touchy situation because he’s my heart and when you love someone unconditionally, you tend to accept everything about them, and that’s even if they’re hurting you. I feel like I’m the type of mom that puts her children first, so I feel like what they need in their life is a father and I feel like he is the closest thing being that he’s been apart of my son’s life since he was three, and obviously I now have a daughter with him. I really wish that we can work things out as a family, but I’m starting to see that it does take two and I can’t do it by myself. It’s just one of those things where you have to kind of go out there and see what else is out there so that he knows how special I really am. I’m just gonna have to pull away from the situation and just have to let him do what he needs to do, and if he were to ever wanna come back and wanna be a family, I don’t know what I would say. I may have moved on at that point. It’s really hard but because my emotions are, I’m so passionate about family, that it’s baby steps right now. We are co-parenting and nothing’s gonna change. It seems like we have the type of relationship that we don’t let what others say affect what him and I have. He’s just a big part of my daughter’s life like he’s here in LA right now and we’ve been spending a lot of time doing family things. I can’t really force anything, I just have to kind of let it happen. But I am gonna try to move on, and date, and see how it goes, and let God just lay the situation out for me.

Is he supportive of your being on the show? Obviously that’s sort of your "in" to being a wife or girlfriend of a basketball player.

Well, yes, obviously because I’m on the show. He's supportive of everything that I do, he's just, a man. He doesn’t like to hear all the stuff that goes on and he doesn’t like to hear what the girls do to me sometimes because he knows I’m a good person and he knows I have a good heart, so he doesn’t like to hear it.