Pulse Check: Brittany Simon's Analysis of TS Madison's Interview on The NeNe Leakes Show

A critical lens to approach a critical interview

TW: Transphobia

Happy Pride, hunters! This Pulse Check is in honor.

Pulse Check is where I take the culture’s temperature and offer helpful context for the latest moments shaping public conversation. Think of it like me putting two fingers on the culture’s neck and asking—you good?

This time, I’m spotlighting a content creator named Brittany Simon, who broke down the recent interview between TS Madison and NeNe Leakes with nuance and clarity. It’s a complex piece of media—messy, flawed, and deeply reflective of where we are in contemporary Black queer culture. Brittany’s breakdown made it accessible without sanitizing it, and offered the critical framing I needed to engage with it thoughtfully.

The interview itself contains moments of transphobia that are hard to watch. For that reason, I didn’t watch it raw—I watched it through Brittany’s lens. And I’m glad I did. Her framing helped me appreciate the interview’s contradictions, its tensions, and its cultural weight. Rather than dismissing it for its flaws, I was able to see how those flaws are part of what make the conversation so revealing in the first place.

Note: Every Friday at 1 pm AST (10 am PT/1 pm ET), I host a live complement to Killer Instinct called Killer Frequency. June 20th’s episode is in honor of Pride. I hope to see you there! Put me on in the background and let me take you to the cutting edge of pop culture.

Public Imperfection as Performance: A Study in Black Femininity

I wasn’t sure I’d watch the interview between NeNe Leakes and TS Madison. Honestly, I wasn’t confident NeNe had the range to hold space for that kind of conversation in a way I’d respect. But then I came across a content creator, Brittany Simon, who dissected the interview so critically and thoughtfully that I ended up watching the whole thing through her lens. Her analysis impressed me deeply. She didn’t flatten either woman into a hero or a villain. Instead, she framed the moment as something more layered, more human.

And that’s precisely why I’m making this Pulse Check about her breakdown.

For those unfamiliar, NeNe Leakes isn’t just a Real Housewife—she’s the Housewife. Her run on Real Housewives of Atlanta has been foundational to the franchise itself. Beyond the show, NeNe became embedded in pop culture in ways few reality stars ever have. These days, she circulates more through GIFs than screen time—her facial expressions and one-liners are all over the internet, often divorced from context, but always unmistakably NeNe. You may have even used some of her lines without realizing the origin.

I said what I said.

It’s also worth noting that Real Housewives of Atlanta is a type of media staple in some corners of Black queer culture.

Fascinatingly, Brittany didn’t initially recognize NeNe as a reality TV figure. She only knew her through GIFs. That, to me, says everything about NeNe’s legacy. The strength of her performance revolutionized GIFs, a medium that wasn’t even widely used online when Real Housewives of Atlanta first aired. Of course, NeNe’s relationship with RHOA is complicated. She eventually left the show—something common in the Housewives universe, but more notable in her case, given how central she was to Atlanta’s identity. Beyond that, she filed a discrimination lawsuit against Bravo and NBCUniversal, creating a rift with the network and Andy Cohen. She has become a vocal critic of the working conditions that reality TV stars face, advocating for recognition, royalties, and protection. Many fans still call for her return to Atlanta, but that door remains closed, at least for now, though there have been some rumors of a potential return for season 17. Since her Housewives’ departure, NeNe has been more active on YouTube, and this interview with TS Madison is part of her new media chapter.

As for TS Madison, she’s a cultural force in her own right. A Black trans woman, former sex worker, viral sensation, entrepreneur, and now music royalty. She first gained attention with her “New Weave 22 Inches” viral video. She built an empire by monetizing content on platforms like Vine and YouTube, long before it was common or easy to do so as a trans woman, especially one unapologetically open about sex work. TS Madison is the first Black trans woman to host a mainstream talk show. Her story has since been documented in The TS Madison Experience, and she has continued to expand her visibility, appearing in films like Zola and Bros, as well as serving as a guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race. She navigates between queer spaces, Black pop culture, and mainstream celebrity with a unique agility and a critical perspective. She’s been the target of public transphobia from peers like Jess Hilarious and Khia (yes, My Neck, My Back Khia), while also facing criticism from within the queer community for her proximity to cishet celebrity culture.

And yet, she continues to evolve.

Case in point: TS Madison is now receiving mechanical royalties from Renaissance. That places her voice—literally—on one of the most acclaimed albums of the decade. Beyoncé sampled her voice on “COZY,” and Madison has confirmed she’s getting paid as that track travels through streaming, live performance, and even both of B’s recent tours.

What surprised me most about this interview was that neither woman was trying to perform perfection. They were honest, flawed, at times ignorant, but ultimately open. NeNe didn’t always have the vocabulary or framework to fully show up in a conversation about gender, queerness, and trans experience. She struggled with definitions. For example, NeNe used to be a stripper. Even on RHOA, NeNe’s history as a stripper was often a site of both attack and defensiveness. In this interview, NeNe didn’t initially understand stripping as part of the spectrum of sex work. She doesn’t fully identify with the language that surrounds sex work politics today, and that’s part of the generational and cultural gap in this exchange.

TS Madison, for her part, is also on her own journey—learning how to speak about trauma, queerness, sex work, and respectability with more nuance. And while I don’t think the interview was perfect (what conversation between two public figures with long, messy histories could be?), there was an undeniable tenderness there. A mutual attempt to meet each other, not where they should be, but where they are.

Brittany Simon, a queer sex worker herself, didn’t overlook the interview’s flaws. Her breakdown created a space for critical appreciation, seeing both the value and the limitations of this moment. In a landscape where we often either stan or cancel, that kind of approach is refreshing.

This Pulse Check is less about the interview and more about what it revealed: the continued relevance of two very different Black women, both shaped by sex work, public ridicule, and the changing tides of digital culture. Their conversation, flawed as it was, still conveyed something worth listening to.

And thanks to this creator’s lens, I was able to see it more clearly.