Jamie Foxx will play Mike Tyson in a new biopic -- and the boxer's ex-wife, Robin Givens was asked her thoughts about the movie.
Givens and Tyson married in 1988, but she filed for divorce just eight months later. At the time, she told Barbara Walters being married to him was "torture, pure hell" -- and claimed in her divorce announcement he threatened to kill her and their relationship was one filled with "continued violence."
Appearing on Oprah in 2009, Tyson even admitted he had "socked" her during their marriage and said it "definitely" was an abusive relationship -- but added, "both ways."
In a pair of new interviews on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy, Givens was asked her thoughts on the upcoming biopic and how she might be portrayed if their history is included in the film.
She told Andy Cohen, "It's a little, hm, I don't want to say bothersome but it's funny in life how you're always kind of learning and growing and healing and that wasn't like a fun ex for me." She notes that she "went and got the book that he wrote and... was reading it and there were so many things that are so not true that it's hard not to feel deeply disturbed by it..."
While she said she hopes she's "stronger" because of their time together, she said Tyson's claims have been "a little upsetting."
When Cohen asked whether she hopes she's not in the movie at all, she said, "Of course" -- adding, "the absolute truth would be absolutely yes."
"You know what term you hear a lot recently, 'My truth,' I hear that term. For me, I kind of believe truth is truth..... there are certain things that are true and not true. And for somebody to take history and repurpose it or write what they want is so deeply upsetting to me. I don't want to get bogged down in that ... I think just to be able to lie ... you throw enough mud, it sticks. We're living in this time now where people can say all kinds of things and if you say it loud enough, people believe it."
When Cohen said she should reach out to the film's producers, she said she hoped the climate has changed enough when it comes to the abuse of women where that isn't even necessary.
"The climate's been changed, so you have the #MeToo movement and things that used to be acceptable to do to women or say about women, I don't think are necessarily acceptable now."
Givens went on, "I think to be on the other end of what I've experienced and to have somebody say, 'The best punch I ever threw was against Robin and she bounced one wall to the next and was out,'" repeating a quote from the book "Fire and Fear: The Inside Story of Mike Tyson" attributed to Mike. "I'm literally praying that those things, we're in a climate where it's not acceptable, it's not rewarded, it's not congratulated and that's something that truly means a lot to me."
