Pixabay Holly Robinson-Peete will co-host a new dating show with her husband, Rodney Peete
Actress Holly Robinson-Peete has teamed up with her husband, former NFL player Rodney Peete, for a new adventure: co-hosting a dating show. The couple has co-starred on TV before, in two reality series about their own family — ‘For Peetes’ Sake,” which aired on OWN from 2016 to 2017 and Hallmark Channel‘s first-ever reality show, “Meet the Peetes,” in 2018 and 2019.
Now, the duo will co-host and serve as “love experts” on a new dating show called “Queens Court,” set to premiere on NBC’s streaming platform, Peacock, on March 16, 2023. According to press materials, the “Hollywood power couple” will guide three famous, single women — Tamar Braxton, Evelyn Lozada, and Nivea — as they try to find love among 21 potential suitors and build their own bond as a trio.
The three featured women, who are all 40 or older, have had rocky and very public relationships. Braxton, whose sister is Grammy winner Toni Braxton, starred in seven seasons of their show “Braxton Family Values” but wrote on Instagram in March 2021 that she’d been left “homeless, heartless and jobless” after discovering her beau, David Adefeso, was cheating on her. Meanwhile, Lozada appeared on “Basketball Wives” opposite her ex-husband, former NFL player Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson, and Nivea is an R&B singer who’s been in high-profile relationships with rappers The Dream and Lil Wayne.
In a January interview with Black Enterprise’s “Inside the Studio,” Robinson-Peete said they “had a hoot” filming but that it also got to be “very emotional” counseling the women through their journeys to potential love.
Holly Robinson-Peete Shares What It Was Like Advising 3 Single Women on ‘Queens Court’
Married since 1995, Robinson-Peete, 58, told “Inside the Studio” that she knew she and her husband were a perfect fit to serve as guides on the show as soon as they were asked to host it.
She said, “You know, when they asked us to do it, I thought ‘You know, Rodney and I would be good at this.’ We’ve been married for 150 years, right? We’ve been up, we’ve been down, we’ve had all kinds of issues, but we’re still here. We’re not going anywhere.”
“We felt like (it would work) as long as we could be proactive with the ladies, if they were open to talking with us about things,” she continued. “We don’t know everything, but we’ve seen some things. And they were just very … they were like little sisters to us. Like, they were very open.”
Though Robinson-Peete has starred in plenty of Hallmark romances in which she finds love with a leading man, she acknowledged that in real life, she and her husband have “been out of the dating game for almost 30 years so we have no game anymore.” Though they had to learn from the three women what it’s like to date in today’s climate, the women learned from them about what it takes to persevere and make a relationship last.
“Rodney and I get in there and we give advice, and we do a little couples’ counseling even though we are not certified counselors,” she said. “But we talk to them because we care. We were very invested in these women finding love.”
As for whether the TV experiment worked, Robinson-Peete said, “It was fun and it was successful. That’s all I can say about it. I loved it, I hope we can do another cycle.”
Holly Robinson-Peete & Rodney Peete Work Through Adversity to Stay Together
Though their relationship has had its challenges, including navigating their son R.J.’s autism diagnosis and recently mourning the loss of Peete’s mother late last year, the couple is committed to staying together through the hard times and celebrating the good ones.
In 2018, Robinson-Peete told the New York Times, “We survived our son’s autism, we survived the NFL, the distance of being away, and the depression of athlete retirement. When autism hit I thought that would break us, but it didn’t.”
Before they got married, she told the paper, “Rodney was monogamously challenged,” so he agreed to go to couple’s therapy. His openness to learning and changing gave her hope for their relationship early on and said, “It’s the work that he’s willing to put in that got us here.”
On his wife’s birthday in September 2022, Peete posted an Instagram photo of them together and wrote, “Thank You for Always showing up for me and our family. I’ve loved you for more than half of my time on earth and I will continue loving you and honoring you forever and ever! You make me better, baby!!”
The couple has four kids together: 25-year-old twins Ryan Elizabeth Peete and Rodney Peete, Jr. (R.J.), and sons Robinson, 20, and Roman, 17.