TEEN Mom OG alum Mackenzie Edwards has accused her husband Ryan’s ex, Maci Bookout, of “using her own kids” to make money on TV.
In an exclusive interview with The Sun, Mackenzie, 24, also vowed never to return to the show after she and Ryan, 33, were fired from the MTV reality series earlier this year.
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Speaking about her life after Teen Mom OG, Mackenzie said she is now working as a sales representative for a local company near her hometown of Harrison, Tennessee.
She also lashed out at Maci, 30, who in addition to son Bentley, 12, with ex Ryan, shares 6-year-old daughter Jayde and 5-year-old son Maverick with husband Taylor McKinney.
Mackenzie told The Sun: “Life has been great since we left Teen Mom OG.
“You couldn’t pay me enough money to go back.
“I just can’t get down with a false narrative about our own lives and I’m happy to be gone.
“The things that I was seeing on TV didn’t match up with real life, especially in what pertained to me and Ryan.”
She continued, speaking about Maci and Taylor: “I’m just done and I think that all that they care about is money.
“That’s the God’s honest truth, they’ll use their own children to make a buck and I’m not cool with that.
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“I don’t think it’s OK to use stuff that Bentley has got going on emotionally for a dollar.
“I have values and I have morals and I’m just not okay with it anymore.
“I would work until my fingers bled before I went back.”
Teen Mom fans have slammed Maci in the past for talking about therapy and other personal issues with preteen Bentley on camera.
‘WE WERE JUST BLINDSIDED’
Mackenzie also blamed MTV’s editing and production process for her bad experience starring on the show for several seasons.
She claimed: “Ryan and I just didn’t agree with a lot of what MTV did on the show.
“Just as an example, after this last season we sat down at the very end, me and Ryan and Jen and Larry, and we said ‘This was the best season that we ever had, just no drama, no nothing.’
“We thought that things were going great. We had no idea and we were just blindsided by everything when we watched the show.
“We kind of felt that we were being used to create some narrative that we didn’t know about.
“We were trying to make things better, our number one goal was just to make things better for everybody.”
PRODUCERS ‘HIDE STUFF’
Mackenzie also claimed her quotes on the show were “taken out of context,” while Maci and Taylor were given a more positive edit.
She continued: “Maci and Taylor are very aggressive people but they don’t like to portray that.
“The people who run the show hide stuff from you so you just don’t really know what’s going on.
“They take stuff out of context and make you look like an a**hole when you were just trying to answer a basic question not about somebody else.
She also said her family’s politics clashed with those of the network.
“The other thing with MTV is that we’re just not liberal.
“I have an open mind and I’m willing to listen to anyone’s point of view regardless.
“I’m not going to push what I think down somebody’s throat and I don’t expect them to push it down mine.
“I don’t care how much money you’re waving in my face, I’m going to stay true to myself and I’m not going to follow behind like a little puppet.
“I just think that leaving the show is a blessing in disguise and I couldn’t be any happier.”
NASTY FIGHT
As The Sun first reported, Ryan, Mackenzie and their family members were fired from the show after an explosive fight broke out between Ryan’s dad Larry and Maci’s husband Taylor while filming the show reunion.
Ryan told The Sun this week that he had previously fallen out with the show’s producers after they allegedly took down an American flag from his front porch.
“We knew that they were out there for themselves but what got me is when they took my flag down off the porch.
“They laid it on the ground and when I went down to pick it up they told me it was in their shot.
“I got real angry because it was an American flag and they said it was in their way.
“I said ‘Either put it back on the post or leave,’ and that was the last time they ever came back, I guess.”
Ryan and Mackenzie have been at odds with Maci for years after they fought over how to deal with the father of three’s addiction problems, and how his mental health problems affected their co-parenting.
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