While speaking about the forthcoming 30th-anniversary reunion special of Martin, Tisha Campbell reflected on how she was able to forgive Martin Lawrence following the 1997 sexual harassment lawsuit she filed against the sitcom star.
“We worked really hard to reconnect, to forgive,” Campbell said to Gayle King on CBS Mornings. “And this reunion is about a celebration of everything that we did, everything that we accomplished and our growth as human beings. So we concentrated mostly on that.”
GKing then recalled a few of the very public ordeals Campbell had to trudge through in her career, including her highly publicized 2018 divorce from her husband of 20 years, Duane Martin. Regardless, Campbell said she’s in good spirits.
“I am the happiest I have been in my life,” she said. “It was a combination of the newfound freedom in my life and COVID isolation. I really had to sit with myself and my children. It was that whole time where I got to rediscover who I was because I’ve been paying bills since I was five years old and I learned that I’m super intelligent and resilient. And that I was a really good role model for my kids and that I loved being a mother.”
She continued, “I took being married very seriously. I took being a mother very seriously, and at this point, it’s really about who am I? Discovering who I am and everything that you go through is like a beautiful devastation. You’re gonna learn something really interesting about yourself. Sometimes things come in a really complicated, interesting, ugly gift. It’s wrapped in a very strange package and I just learned so much about myself and I really am the happiest I’ve ever been.”
In an interview with GQ back in 2020, Lawrence also reflected on the 1997 lawsuit against him, which accused him of physical and emotional abuse, including “repeated and escalating sexual harassment, sexual battery and violent threats.” Lawrence denied the allegations at the time, and both parties settled out of court.
“We don’t need to talk about something that just didn’t happen,” Lawrence told the publication. “So I just decided to walk away from the show. I just decided to end it. People said that I got canceled, but that wasn’t the case. I decided to just leave the show.”
He later reaffirmed on Instagram that his relationship with Campbell was on good terms.
“Regardless of the past or any misrepresentation of it In the press, I have nothin but love for Tisha then and now,” he captioned an old photo of himself and Campbell. “We are good and always will be!”
The Martin reunion will air on BET+ on June 16 and will feature the original cast with the exception of Tommy Ford, who died in 2016 as a result of a ruptured abdominal aneurysm.
Check out the full interview with Campbell up top.
