Courtesy of Jenelle Evans/Kyle Marisa Roth "Teen Mom" star Jenelle Evans and TikTok creator Kyle Marisa Roth are telling their sides of the story.
Former “Teen Mom” star Jenelle Evans and TikTok blogger Kyle Marisa Roth are feuding over a “blind item” Roth promoted, and both provided exclusive interviews to Heavy about the situation.
A blind item is usually a rumor posted in a gossip column where the identities of the people involved are kept anonymous and some details are kept hidden.
Roth maintains she was just reading what someone else created.
“As soon as I heard she was upset, I took down my video,” the TikTok creator told Heavy. “If I had any empathy, it’s gone, because I did the right thing and took the video down … and that should have been the end of it.”
Roth said she was inspired to create her account because — while she said she feels “bad” about repeating rumors about minors that are untrue — “the blind items expose a lot of child harm.”
The TikTok creator admits to making mistakes. “I misspeak all the time and then I make corrections,” she told Heavy.
But Roth, 35, wasn’t prepared for Evans to respond to her video.
Evans created a series of videos talking about Roth, including Evans creating her own “blind item” supposedly about the creator’s personal life.
“She wants to be like me now. I guess she’s a fan,” Roth said.
Before the blind item that upset the “Teen Mom” star, Roth wasn’t familiar with the controversies that have shrouded Evans and her husband, David Eason.
Roth, who said she has “extensive knowledge of pop culture” because she’s autistic, read a blind item that was originally posted to the blog Crazy Days and Nights, run by the anonymous “Enty Lawyer.” The blind item makes a “disturbing” allegation about two unrelated minors being forced to sleep in the same bed and speculates that it’s so the parents can potentially “monetize” the situation.
Evans was not named in the blind item, but when Roth read the blind item in her original TikTok — which has since been deleted, but preserved by Teen Mom Chatter — she made a reference to Evans’ ex-boyfriend, Kieffer Delp, hinting the blurb was about her family. Delp appeared in the earlier seasons of “Teen Mom 2” with Evans and there’s a line that became famous, where Evans’ mother, Barbara says, “Well, Jenelle, I seen ya with Kieffer.”
Evans has two teenage children in her home: her stepdaughter, 15-year-old Maryssa, and her son, 13-year-old Jace. Maryssa is the daughter of Evans’ husband, whom he shares with his ex, Whitney Johnson. Jace is the son Evans welcomed with her high school boyfriend, Andrew Lewis. Evans also has two younger children in the home: 8-year-old Kaiser and 6-year-old Ensley.
“I didn’t know what I was dealing with,” Roth told Heavy in a phone interview.
Evans was fired from “Teen Mom” in 2019 after Eason shot and killed the family dog, Nugget. Eason was fired by MTV the year before after he was accused of writing homophobic and transphobic comments online, per People.
Roth didn’t find out about those incidents until after the feud with Evans began.
Roth said the point of her reading blind items on TikTok is to have fun, but if she ever crosses a line and a celebrity asks her to take down a video, she removes it without question.
Roth Says She Was ‘Scared’ for Her Life Because of the Feud
Roth said she became fearful for her life when Evans claimed in a TikTok comment that Roth was transgender because “there are psychopaths that own guns and kill trans people. So it was truly scary for me,” she told Heavy in a phone interview.
She was also worried about her dog — named Alexander Hamilton — after finding out about what happened to Nugget.
However, in an email to Heavy, Evans denied saying Roth was transgender. “I never said she was a transgender. I stated a person’s gender,” Evans wrote.
Roth has screenshots of Evans’ comments in a TikTok video, where Evans wrote, “She is a he.”
On March 29, Roth went live on TikTok and cried, saying she feared for her safety.
“This is the first time I’ve ever felt unsafe because of the internet — that such’ a horrible feeling — because I really love what I do and I have such a fun community,” Roth told Heavy. “Gossip is the universal language and I have followers from all over the world but we have such a good time talking shit about rich people.”
She said she’s a cancer survivor who has dealt with suicidal depression, generalized anxiety and panic disorder and uses the internet to relieve stress.
“Like, at the end of the day, this is also entertainment for other people,” Roth said. “But when it stops being entertaining … that’s where I draw the line. I’m not here to go to war and to battle people. … I’m here to dissociate from the horrible everyday existence that we all face and the ongoing existential crisis every millennial feels.”
If she could talk to Evans directly, Roth said she would say: “I took the video down, focus on Crazy Days and Reddit, focus on your children … and just leave my dog alone.”
Still, Roth is going to continue to do what makes her happy. “I have to keep doing me,” she told Heavy.
Evans Says Her Mental Health Has Been Suffering Because of the Feud
The former “Teen Mom” star also said her mental health was being negatively affected by the feud.
“This Blind Item has affected my mental health for the past 2 days because people believing that rumor was about my family,” Evans wrote in an email to Heavy. “The Blind item on the website doesn’t have any names attached to it, not mine or my husband’s.
“Since Kyle Marisa attached our names to this rumor her TikTok Followers have been harassing my page with hate,” Evans continued. “Kyle has not reached out to me at all. No apology has been made. I have never spoke to Kyle my entire life. Kyle had me blocked since day one when she made the video about my family.”
Evans was afraid there could be violent repercussions for Roth’s video.
“I think Kyle needs to stop they way she assumes these blind items are real and attaching people’s names,” the former MTV star said. “She has a following of 300k on TikTok and her assuming that blind item was about me can send violence to my family thinking we are horrible parents.
“This isn’t healthy to anyone she speaks badly about and legal action may be taken,” she continued. “People can’t keep walking all over me.”
Jace and Maryssa are unaware of the blind item, she said, but they have seen how it affected their mother. “The kids have not seen any of this and I’m glad,” Evans told Heavy. “My kids have seen how upset I was yesterday. The anxiety caused episodes of esophagus spasms for me.”
Some “Teen Mom” fans were concerned that Jace doesn’t have his own space in Evans’ home since Jenelle Evans’ mom, Barbara Evans, relinquished her parental rights over the boy — but Evans said he does.
“My son in fact has his own bed and his own room or else I don’t think my mom would have been comfortable signing back custody,” she said.
Jace has been doing well since moving in with Evans, Eason and his siblings, she said.
“It’s been great having Jace home with the family and he seems much happier being around his siblings,” Evans told Heavy. “He has lots of land to ride his dirt bike which is his biggest hobby at the moment.”