Todd Tucker has spoken out about the suicidal thoughts he faced during his separation from Kandi Burruss.
The producer, 53, said in an exclusive interview that he endured dark days alone in the guesthouse after the couple split, with his children and former family living next door in the main residence. He said the isolation left him trapped in his own head, replaying the collapse of his 11-year marriage and questioning whether he had lost his family permanently.
“It was a lot of time in my head, thinking, trying to figure out, ‘What did I just do? What just happened? Did I lose my family?’ So I’m gonna be honest, I had nobody really to lean on,” Tucker shared.
The emotional toll became so severe that Tucker admitted he once looked at his gun during the separation. He recalled snapping out of that moment by focusing on his responsibility to his children. “But then I snapped out of it, like, ‘No, you have a family. You have kids that you have to see them through,'” he said.
Tucker and Burruss, 50, share two children together: son Ace, 10, and daughter Blaze, 6. Each also has an adult daughter from previous relationships — Kaela Tucker, 30, and Riley Burruss, 24. Despite the divorce, Tucker emphasized that he and Burruss maintain a functional co-parenting relationship for the sake of their kids. “We’re always fine with each other. There’s never any tension or anything. Even though we may be pissed off or mad or feeling a way, we put it to the side for our kids,” he stated.
Since those difficult months, Tucker said he has begun rebuilding himself through faith and professional help. “It was a lot of dark times, but since then, I’ve been going to church, I’m about to find me a therapist and just take this journey of rebuilding myself, getting myself where I wanna be and being the best dad and the best co-parent and moving forward,” he explained.
Tucker is channeling this experience into his forthcoming docuseries, “Til Divorce Do Us Part,” which he described as his male counterpart to Burruss’s recent “I Do. I Did. I’m Done.” tour. The project features candid conversations with male friends, several of whom appeared on “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.” He called the filming process “very emotional” but felt compelled as a man to tell his side after years of silence.
“I think we [men] carry a lot of stress, we carry a lot inside, and sometimes, it’s too late, you know? It’s a stroke, or he’s got cancer because he’s been holding it [in],” Tucker observed. “So I want guys to know, man, just get it out, speak to a therapist, however you got to get it out. Don’t try to bash anybody, don’t try and make anybody look bad, but just get it off your chest.”
Tucker defended his decision to speak publicly by pointing to Burruss’s own extensive disclosures about their marriage during her 14 seasons on “RHOA.” The docuseries trailer includes a moment where “RHOA” alum Cynthia Bailey’s ex-husband Peter Thomas asks Tucker, “Is the threesome s–t for real for real?” Tucker replies, “We did, we did. I would say [for] most of our marriage, we did.”
Burruss fired back at this preview, accusing Tucker of “choosing to sensationalize [their] sex life to stretch his five minutes of fame” and insisting that “what consensually happens between a husband and wife in the privacy of their marriage is exactly that: private.”
Tucker challenged that framing directly. “I gotta ask you a question: Do we have a private marital sex life?” he asked rhetorically. “And this is not even from me. Like, you’ve heard it from her. So how private is it? Even when she first started saying that we had done a threesome or done threesomes, she didn’t consult with me. And for the most part, I’m a good sport, so I never made a problem of it or an issue of it.”
He insisted he was revealing nothing new. “So at the end of the day, I’m not throwing out there any new information,” Tucker said. “I’m not out there doing a tell-all or naming any people or doing anything like that. It was just a conversation, and that’s really all it was.”
Tucker also addressed the role of Burruss’s mother, “Mama Joyce” Jones, in their marriage’s dynamic. He said he “allowed a lot of disrespect” from her and now feels a weight has been “lifted off [his] shoulders” without that relationship. “I was trying to prove myself to somebody who didn’t like me, and I never stopped,” he admitted. “And I’ve never stopped caring about her seeing my kids and making sure [they know], ‘That’s your grandma. Make sure you call her.'”
Regarding the cause of the divorce, Tucker vaguely referenced an “incident” involving another woman that he plans to detail in the docuseries. He revealed he attempted to arrange couples therapy rather than simply make grand gestures. “A lot of our friends were like, ‘Buy her flowers, buy her flowers.’ But I was like, ‘Hey, this is bigger than flowers.’ So I set up for us to go to therapy ’cause this was beyond buying flowers,” he recounted. “‘Cause if I buy flowers and she’s happy and we’re cool, I’m still not 100%, you know what I’m saying?”
When Burruss proved unwilling to fight for the marriage, Tucker said he chose to step aside. “So I wanted to deal with the overall relationship issues, and I think looking back, she wanted me to fix where she was at in the moment before she could fix the bigger part of the relationship issues, if that makes sense. So I just think when I saw she wasn’t willing to fight with me, I just thought that it’s probably best for me to just kind of bow out. If she wants a divorce, give her the divorce.”
Despite everything, Tucker maintained he never wanted the marriage to end. “I made vows to be with her forever, and I would have stayed forever,” he said, adding that he accepts “sometimes, things aren’t meant forever.”
Tucker will host a double feature premiere of “Til Divorce Do Us Part” and his new film “Don’t Bring Your Man to Atlanta” next month during an AMC Theaters weekend takeover.