The Time NeNe Leakes Lost Her Talk Show for Dragging Wendy Williams

Back in 2014 NeNe Leakes famously dragged Wendy Williams after Wendy featured NeNe in an unflattering Hot Topics segment about NeNe defacing her Birkin bag [click here if you missed that]. 

Turns out NeNe's mouth costs her a talk show gig with Tom Arnold...

From Page Six

The former “Roseanne” star, 63, tells Page Six he “connected” with Williams’ producers after a few appearances on her titular program and was presented with the concept.

“The reason they approached me is because they’d seen me go on ‘Wendy,’ and I had a great time,” he tells us. “The goal was to have [our show] go on right after ‘The Wendy Willams Show.’ And I said, ‘Oh, that sounds great! Let’s get together.’ And then we did.”

According to Arnold, the producers were “jazzed” about the project, telling him they “felt it would be a home run” as the “Wendy” show was “killing it” at the time.

“I thought, ‘With somebody like NeNe Leakes, how do you go wrong there?’ And then I figured out how you go wrong – make fun of somebody’s purse,” he said.

After the handbag caught Williams’ attention, she asked both her viewers and Twitter followers, “Hot Question: What do think about @NeNeLeakes defacing her Birkin bag?”

The former radio host, 57, soon deleted the tweet, but not before Leakes got wind of the shady “Hot Topics” segment. She responded with a scathing blog post, which Arnold claims cost them their show.

Arnold told us that it wasn’t long before he got a call from one of the producers, with whom he’d had “great meetings.”

“She called me and said, ‘I got some bad news. We can’t do the show.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ And she said, ‘Because NeNe made fun of Wendy Williams’ purse.’ And I go, ‘Who would care about somebody making fun of their purse?’ And the producer said, ‘Black women care.’ She explained to me it was a very personal thing,” he recalled.

“It was a big deal. She said, ‘Wendy has the No. 1 show. What if Roseanne [Barr was put in the same position]?’ I go, ‘Yeah, I guess she probably would get upset about somebody saying something about her purse.’”