Talkin’ Babies With Maci from MTV’s Teen Mom

The new season of Teen Mom premiers tonight at 10 PM on MTV and this CollegeCandy intern couldn’t be more excited. Not only do we get to find out if Amber’s havin’ another baby, but I had the chance to chat with everyone’s favorite mama, Maci. She filled me in on how her life has changed since she moved from Chattanooga, Bentley started talking up a storm, and even gave the CollegeCandy readers some invaluable dating advice. Oh, and she’s got a new man (who seems like a much better fit than her ex-fiance, Ryan). Yay, Maci!
Our convo is below, but if you want the really juicy deetz, you’ll just have to tune in tonight and find out for yourself!
CC: So, season 2! So exciting! What are you looking forward to most this season?
Maci: Honestly, to just kind of see and backtrack. After watching the first two seasons and reliving it I’ve learned a lot about myself and I’ve seen how I can do better… things that I’ve done wrong and things that I’ve done right. I’m interested in seeing what the other girls are up to because we don’t get to talk as much as normal friends! I want to see what’s going on in their lives too.
Do you guys keep in touch outside of the show or just at things like the reunion episodes?
No, I do talk to the girls on, like, a regular basis. A couple of times a month we check in with each other and see how things are going.
Which Teen Mom are you closest with?
Caitlin, probably.
How is your life different now that you’ve been a mom for over a year?
Oh my god, so different. Bentley’s big now so we can go play. Go to different parks and stuff. When he was little he really didn’t do anything but sleep but it’s been crazy. There’s something new every day.
What do you want others – other teen moms, teens in general, college students – to get out of the show?  Specifically, the upcoming season?
I want people that aren’t pregnant to really see the struggles that we go through. I want the show to be pretty much like birth control, kind of. I want them to see what happens when you do get pregnant at a young age. I want grown-ups to see that talking to your kids about sex is a good thing and it can prevent their children from going through what we’re going through. So, I just want it to be educational and I feel like it’s doing a very good job so far.
What is the biggest sacrifice you had to make because you got pregnant when you were so young?
My youth. Being a teenager and having a college life. Being able to hang out with my friends every day. Having responsibility but not having the normal responsibilities of a teenager. Really just my youth. Being a kid, I guess.
Was it worth it?
Yeah, it’s definitely been worth it. I would never trade… as bad as it sounds, I love my friends (laughing), [but] I would never trade a night with Bentley for a night with them.
Have you had a favorite moment or thing that Bentley’s done so far?
Um, probably just talking. He has his own little personality. He talks now and he’s just a little person that’s with me all the time. That’s fun.
How do you balance out being a teenager with being a parent?
I really just have to keep my priorities in line. I’m still friends with all the people I was friends with before I got pregnant but I have to know that Bentley comes first and then school and then work and then doing stuff with my friends. It’s easy, well it’s not easy, but it’s easier to do it if you know what priorities are more important than other ones. That’s what I have to keep in mind… what’s important.
Previews for this season have shown that you have started dating again, how has that been going?
It’s good! I’m happier now and he’s good with Bentley.
Oh… so there’s one guy!
Yes, there’s one guy. I really didn’t date much after Ryan. He’s the first guy that I’ve been dating since. It’s a lot easier now to have the support of him rather than kind of the stressful relationship that I had with Ryan.
Did he know right away that you had Bentley? How did you address that?
Yeah, he knew. We’ve been friends for a really, really long time. So he knew what was all going on and he knew about the baby and stuff like that so that made it easy too that he already knew.
Do you have any advice for teen moms that are trying to date?
Just really make sure to pick someone that’s worth being around you and your baby, and someone that knows the responsibility you have. Really just somebody who is going to support you and help you rather than bring things into your life that you don’t need to deal with. And you don’t NEED to date. I don’t think if I hadn’t found Kyle I would be dating. It’s not something that should really be important right now. If you find somebody, that’s great but I really don’t think it’s something single moms really need to be looking for, especially because it takes away your time from being a mom.
What is the best dating advice that you’ve received?
That I need to find somebody who is my best friend before someone that I am just physically attracted to. Things work out a lot better when you are friends before a boyfriend that you just think is cute.
I know you said before that you watch the show. Has it been weird for you to look back and see yourself?
It is weird to see things that you forget that happened or, at the time, you didn’t think they were that important. When I watch the show I see things that I would have forgotten. And it brings me back into that time.
Do you have any advice for the other moms after watching their scenes with their baby?
Not really. We’ve kind of been really good at what their problems are. Because in the show we all have different struggles and we’re all dealing with different things. I think everybody is doing well with dealing with what their struggles are.
A lot of people think that out of all the teen moms you have the best head on your shoulders. Do you have anyone to thank for that? Does that have to do with how you were raised or that you were okay with putting aside your friends and just really focusing on Bentley?
I think it was honestly just because of the way that I was raised. I guess if I had to thank anybody it would have to be my parents just because my whole life they taught me that if I get in a situation or if I get in trouble that it’s my responsibility and I have to deal with it. And if I need them, they will be there as much as I need them but it is my responsibility and I have to do what is right. And since I was raised that way, as soon as I found out I was pregnant I knew instantly that it was my responsibility that I was gonna have to do the right thing and do the best I could. Even though I knew my parents would be there to help me, they weren’t going to be there to take the responsibility for me. And I’m glad they raised me that way.
What would you tell girls who are in situation like you were?
To really think about how their life has been and what they want to do for their child. For me, I never had to think about adoption. But there are some people, like Caitlin and Tyler, who don’t have this ability to have a baby. And they made an amazing choice for adoption and I think girls really need to look at all the options and know what they have in their lives so that they can give the same thing to their baby.
This is a question that I have to ask… do you now practice safe sex and use birth control?
Do I now? Yes I do.

MTV Teen Mom: Interview with Morgan J. Freeman

Director Of MTV Teen Mom

REMEMBERING the glory days is easy, but Morgan J. Freeman remembers the nadir just as clearly. It was March 2003, and he had traded in his house in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles for his old room in his parents’ house in nearby Long Beach. Hollywood had shredded Mr. Freeman to bits, and this indie director was ready to head back to New York, where he’d last been a success.

One last wild night couldn’t hurt, right?

He slept through his flight and woke up to derision. “I just remember my mom, the way she looked at me that day,” he said recently, during an interview on the High Line, near his West Village office. “Like, at 33, this is how I showed up.”

At 27, he’d been doing far better. The first feature he directed, “Hurricane Streets,” a story of the tension between morality and reality as seen through the lens of a headstrong and streetwise New York teenager, had been the first dramatic film to win three awards at Sundance: the audience favorite, as well as prizes for directing and cinematography.

But Mr. Freeman had burned hot and fast, never again approaching the acclaim of his Hollywood debut. It took submergence in another world altogether for him to get his resurrection. Now 40, he is the executive producer of “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom,” tandem docu-series that have helped reposition MTV’s reality slate from tracking the lives of the young, beautiful and rich to capturing the lives of the young, beautiful and resilient.

Though the medium may be different and the subjects real, it’s a full-circle move for Mr. Freeman, whose early characters were just the sort who could have ended up on a show like “16 and Pregnant,” cocksure and naïve, not inclined to make bad decisions so much as unsure of how to avoid them.

Marcus, the protagonist of “Hurricane Streets,” evolved from a character Mr. Freeman had originally written based on his own mischievous childhood antics. He met Brendan Sexton III, the actor who would give the role intense life, on the set of “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” the Todd Solondz film that won the 1996 Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Mr. Freeman had hustled his way from production assistant to second assistant director on that film, in charge of supervising its young stars, Heather Matarazzo and Mr. Sexton.

“He was genuinely interested in my thoughts and what I had to say,” said Mr. Sexton, who remains close to Mr. Freeman.

From “Dollhouse,” Mr. Freeman — not to be confused with Morgan Freeman, the actor — took a charmed, fast path to “Hurricane Streets,” quickly securing an initial $60,000 in financing and shooting over a few weeks in the summer of 1995. “I loved ‘400 Blows,’ all the antihero kind of movies,” said Mr. Freeman, who was still attending film school at New York University while he was shooting “Hurricane” in and around downtown Manhattan. When the film won at Sundance, though, Mr. Freeman was no longer just a film student with outsized ambition and ego.

“It was like ‘Entourage’ was starting,” he said. “I really had a sense that I’d arrived, and I was going to do it my way. I wouldn’t even go in and take certain meetings. I was so set I was going to be Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino. I was only going to direct what I wrote.” It was the height of the independent film movement, and thumbing one’s nose at standard Hollywood practices seemed like a potentially viable career route.

“It went to all of our heads,” Mr. Sexton said. “He and I both suffered from a combination of arrogance and naïveté.” (“Hurricane Streets” remains an artifact of the day: it’s never been available on DVD or on any online streaming site.)

Mr. Freeman’s follow-up film, “Desert Blue,” had an undercooked script and was rejected from Sundance, the first sign of gloom on the horizon. “You don’t get to make a second film twice,” Mr. Freeman said. He had no third script, but “at this point,” he admitted, “people weren’t very interested in financing my ideas.” Neither of his first two films had been commercial successes. At the same time he was falling in with a fast Hollywood crowd: “the right clubs with the right people at the table.” He was publicly linked with the actress Michelle Williams, then a star of “Dawson’s Creek,” on which he’d worked briefly.

Over the next couple of years everything crumbled. His relationships were unhappy. His representation cut him loose. He struggled with substance abuse. “You never knew what you got when you invited me places,” he said. “You invite me to your graduation, I may show up and throw up on someone, or I may not show up.”

Concerned e-mails were exchanged among Mr. Freeman’s family, colleagues and close friends. His brother, who was beginning his own family, told him he wouldn’t be welcome around the dinner table. Mr. Sexton finally confronted Mr. Freeman on his misbehavior “after we’d both crashed and burned some more,” letting him know, “We’ll help you get well if you want to get well.”

A happenstance meeting led Mr. Freeman to MTV, as a director on the first season of “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County,” the pioneering reality-soap about the indolent, suntanned youth of Southern California, during which he helped shape that show’s visual grammar: cool, spacious and patient. He was also an executive producer on the “Up” series by the British documentarian Michael Apted and one season of “Maui Fever,” about surfers in Hawaii.

“He was young, had a maverick eye and knew how to bridge the gap between vérité and cinematic film language,” said Tony DiSanto, MTV’s president for programming.

By comparison “16 and Pregnant,” about young moms-to-be and “Teen Mom” are rougher around the edges, an evolution for an audience perhaps fatigued with the visual flawlessness of the earlier shows. Mr. Freeman is an executive producer on both shows (through his company, 11th Street Productions), no longer a director, though he still aspires to bring some of his old filmic impulses to the show: “I like to get nice establishing shots and cutaway details and to build a richness in the story.”

The second season of “16 and Pregnant” averaged 2.4 million viewers per episode. “Teen Mom,” which follows the lives of four women who initially appeared in the premiere season of “16 and Pregnant,” has averaged 3.3 million viewers per episode this season. It has also emerged as a surprising pop-cultural phenomenon: Two of its stars, Farrah and Maci, were on the cover of Us Weekly this month, grinning and hoisting their toddlers high.

The shows have become “an unexpected franchise,” Mr. DiSanto said, noting that initially, the network felt “16 and Pregnant” would be driven more by concept than casting. But now that some of the mothers have graduated to “Teen Mom,” that show is “almost becoming ‘The Hills,’ a cast-driven show,” he said. (This season of “Teen Mom” will conclude next month, and the third season of “16 and Pregnant,” with a new cast, is scheduled to begin in October.)

Mr. Freeman has become attached to the shows’ stars, even envisioning the possibility of sticking with these young women through motherhood’s various stages — “first words, first walks, first conversations “ — in the spirit of the “Up” series. “It would be amazing for Morgan to be the guy to bring the Apted thing to MTV,” Mr. DiSanto said.

Barring that Mr. Freeman sees many untapped teenage stories yet to be told. “Can we shine a light on truancy? Can we shine the light on the dropout rate?”

Mr. Sexton said that the teenage years are a natural milieu for Mr. Freeman. “He’s a jubilant, exuberant, youthful person,” he said. “He respects teenagers and respects them as a voice.”

And now Mr. Freeman is finally equipped to handle success. “I have two shows that are working,” he said. “I don’t take that lightly.” He has a place in Brooklyn with a backyard. He’s in a healthy relationship. “I feel like I should go buy a briefcase,” he said.

“What a travesty my life would have been if those had been hits,” he continued, speaking of his early films. “I would be dead.”

Maci and Bentley go to Nashville to see Kyle

Maci decides to take her self and Bentley to Nashville to visit her friends in college and to see the new beau Kyle for the weekend since this is kyle and Bentley first meeting kyle tries to warm up to Bentley and to pull him out of the corner he decided to hide in after Kyle gets there to get the ball out and to play toss the ball with Bentley all in all there first meeting went well.

The also while there went and played miniature golf and played at the race track and hit balls at the ball pin Bentley didn't but he did a good job being a cheer leader for momma Maci  and with the race track  you would think with Bentley being so young that he might be really scared and freaked out but no he was a little scared no crying though and he did have a few smiles Kyle even changed a diaper for Maci she told him he was the pro and met her expectations with the diaper changing and she talks to him about being with her and since that is what they are doing that they are the package deal they come hand in hand and they come as a combo
I think there will probably be lots more with this boy Kyle to come since Maci can even see her self some day marrying him one day she said in the after show this week when talking with the host of that that she and  Kyle and she have know each other since they were like 6 or 7 years old and that he has always been there for her. And that he did know about her being with Ryan and he also knew about the fact that she had Bentley with Ryan she said they have always been the best of friends and that there love that they have for each other grew out of the friendship that they have always had which she said she never had with Ryan at all  so i think she has gracefully let Ryan go for good and hopefully Ryan will do the growing up he needs to do the only thing i sorta worry about which i still don't know about is between Ryan and Kyle how they will get along since i think Kyle may be in it with Maci for the long hall since Maci used to be his and no longer is but seeing how Ryan has moved on too i don't really know that will happen since she has met once again the new love in Ryan's life and since Ryan told her that she is good and plays and has fun with him when Bentley is with him that she should not have any worries and she can now focus on her own new love Kyle so happy for the both of them YEAH FOR MACI AND KYLE feel free to tell me what you think i would love to hear from you as always

Teen Mom’ recap: “Secrets and Lies”

Maci thought Ryan’s new girlfriend wasn’t half bad and she didn’t mind her being around Bentley,  Maci probably felt this way since was getting ready to start a relationship of her own, with close friend Kyle. Amber and Gary got engaged again (yawn). Farrah was still pissed at her mom and refused to communicate with her parents (double yawn). However, she did break down a few walls, mainly the one that surrounds her feelings regarding Sophia’s dad. Catelynn and Tyler started going to couples counseling, because Tyler felt that he could forgive Catelynn for her lying, but he couldn’t forget.

While “Forgetting isn’t as easy as forgiving, that’s if you really forgive in the first place” was last week’s lesson courtesy of Tyler and Catelynn, this week’s lesson has to do with knowing when to call it quits. So in other words, Lesson No. 5 of Teen Mom season two is “No matter how hard you push, you can’t move a brick wall with just your bare hands.”

Now, no one here is condoning giving up without trying. But it does get to a point where no matter how hard you ‘try’ you’re not going to change the person, they have to choose to change on their own. And we’re primarily looking at Amber and Gary’s relationship when we say this. Honestly, you’d have to be blind not to see how hard they push one another to change. And if you pulled out a tape measure, you’d find that they both budge, well, pretty much just as much as a brick wall would when you’re pushing it with your bare hands.

It really is awesome that they’re trying to make it work, the best way they know how, but it has to reach a point where they accept that their relationship just might not work. And I can confidently say, from the edited film MTV has been airing, that these two just don’t work well together. I have no idea what they have in common, aside from a fear of being alone and Leah.

The lesson as whole also includes exhausting every option at your disposal and making sure you’re satisfied with what you’ve tried before you walk away. And you’ll also want to make sure not to burn that bridge when you walk away. I think this is a valuable lesson not just for Amber and Gary to grow and mature, but also the emotional development of their daughter Leah, who has to witness her parents fighting day in and day out. Sometimes you got to stop pushing and just walk around the wall. 

Now let’s get up to speed with the girls. 

Amber:

It looked like Amber, Gary and Leah’s Easter was off to a good start. Amber was still happy to be engaged and Gary dressed up in a bunny suit to spread the holiday cheer. And then they went to Gary’s house for Easter dinner, which was where everything took a turn for the worse. Amber mentioned how they were engaged again and as soon as she started discussing the wedding plans Gary’s step dad was not feeling it, because he obviously hates Amber’s dad, no idea why. And Amber of course stormed out of the house, which resulted in yet another fight between her and Gary during which they threatened each other with their engagement status. So Gary headed back to his mom’s house with Leah in an attempt to defuse the situation. And, like clockwork, they’re back together the next day exchanging apologies.

Maci:

Maci decided it was time for Bentley to meet Kyle, so she takes him down to Nashville for a weekend trip. Not normally the shy type, Bentley hid in the corner until he warmed up to Kyle, but he wound up liking the dude, who totally looks like he could be his dad, even though we know he’s not. And Maci wasted no time laying down the rules of the relationship, if her and Kyle are going to be together, putting an emphasis on how she has to consider the impact it could have on her child. She seriously is one of the most mature teen moms, and we’re not just talking about on the show.

Farrah:

Farrah gets scammed, if only she didn’t feel the need to upgrade her car situation all because she wanted a sunroof and power locks. So, here’s what happened, she sold her car and the person lived out of state, so they sent her a check for the price of the car and shipping telling her to deposit the check and wire them the cash so that they could pay the shipping overnight, which she did, without thinking, ‘hey, why don’t they just take the money out of the checking account this check is from instead of having me do it through my account?’ So yeah, she wired the money before the check had a chance to clear and it ultimately bounced leaving her overdrawn by about $3,000. But don’t the moms get paid to be on this show? Like, if The Jersey Shore people get paid, why wouldn’t teen moms, you know, the ones who really need the money? Oh, and Farrah taught us the art of making a homemade diaper!

Catelynn:

The trust level between Tyler and Catelynn plummets to a new low when she let him know that she had been in contact with her ex more than she originally let on. So the word selfish got thrown around, as well as Carley’s name, which, yeah, was kind of messed up, but an understandable defense mechanism on Catelynn’s part. It’s so painful watching them fight, it really is.  And Catelynn’s mom wasn’t of much help since she was in a bad mood. But as soon as Tyler’s mom sat him down for a talk she broke through. She pointed out how his anger with Catelynn really has to do with issues inside himself and it’s easier to blame her. So Tyler, of course, apologized to Catelynn, which was perfect timing since the phone records he requested had just come in. But he didn’t want to see them, because according to him, if he’s going to trust her, he needs to start somewhere and looking at the records would just be moving backwards when he wants to move forward.

Next Week:

Maci is moving to Nashville with Kyle and Bentley may have called him daddy, Gary is bummed that Amber can’t handle the GED test and she is offended as heck, Farrah’s down with the speed dating game and Catelynn’s mom lashes out on her for what seems to regard the adoption.

Catch up with our other Teen Mom recaps.


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