GENERAL PRESS 24
Black Ink Crew is a successful VH1 series in the same vein as Love & Hip-Hop, centered around the staff at a tattoo parlor. The show has several successful spinoffs in various different cities, but the stars of the Black Ink university are certainly the members of its OG cast in New York City.
At the center of a lot of the show’s storyline was Caesar Emmanuel and Crystiana Lavielle Lattimore, aka “Dutchess Lattimore.” Dutchess and Cesar were an item for much of the series until they finally called it quits in 2016, and Dutchess left the television series. Fans were rooting for the pair, and they were even set to get married for a period of time. Dutchess relocated to North Carolina and opened her own tattoo parlor, while Caesar continued to star in Black Ink Crew until getting fired recently.
In 2017, a year after leaving the show, Dutchess stopped by The Breakfast Club to discuss her time on the series and how VH1 and the production company behind Black Ink Crew manipulated her relationship behind the scenes. Dutchess says that Big Fish productions kept pressuring them to set a wedding date. Dutchess said she never felt ready to get married and was pressured to either break up or get married because the parent company was pushing for a wedding special. Because she did not agree to get married, the network started to create issues in the relationship to cause them to separate by forcing interactions and storylines upon them. Eventually, Dutchess walked away because she wanted peace.
Dutchess says that Big Fish presented her paperwork for a spinoff that she did not want. “I did not want to do this,” she told the hosts. She also brought in a copy of their apartment lease that proved that she stopped giving Big Fish permission to film in their home after the company attempted to make it appear her and Ceas were sleeping on an air mattress in season one. According to Dutchess, the air mattress was for Caesar’s cousin who was staying with them and had nowhere to sleep.
Later in the interview, Dutchess touched on the topic of her being accused of cheating while on Caesar. Dutchess told The Breakfast Club that this was a lie and that the photos used to “prove” she was cheating were of her and a fan. The tattoo artist says that there was never proof of her cheating but that she had plenty of proof that Caesar was being unfaithful. Dutchess claims she called the other woman Caesar was with and asked her to hand him the phone, which she did, proving Caesar was there.
The young lady involved with Caesar then went and sent a cease and desist to Big Fish so that they could not use her name or film her. Instead, the company filmed a fake scene with one of their producers so that they could include the storyline in the show. When asked by Charlemagne if Big Fish could sue her for spilling so much tea, Dutchess claims that she is no longer on the show, so they cannot do anything to her. Unfortunately for Dutchess, she would soon find out that her contract forbids her from airing out the dirty laundry of the show.
Caesar recently went viral when a video of him hitting a dog hit the net causing VH1 and Big Fish to immediately fire him from the show. Dutchess decided to use this opportunity to speak out again and talk about her time on the show and some backlash she got following the Breakfast Club interview. On an IG Live, Dutchess asked for people to stop tagging her in stories about Caesar since she is no longer involved.
“I am very offended with the way that our culture chooses to cancel people just based on foolishness and ignorance,” she said at the top of the video. She goes on to remind people that they are not paying attention to a “pattern of behaviors” when it comes to Caesar. Dutchess think it’s unfair that they only fired Cesar following the dog incident, even though they knew for years what he was doing to her and did nothing.
Dutchess says that the network stood beside him for a long time and left her feeling unprotected but finally stood up when it involved a dog. “Over a dog, that’s when they pulled the plug.” She reminds fans again and again that her rant is not about Caesar but about the fact that VH1 put more worth into the dog than her. Do you think Dutchess has a point?
