T. O. BEGINS A NEW CHAPTER IN HIS LIFE AND CAREER, BUT HE SELDOM MAKES A MOVE WITHOUT THE TWO WOMEN WHO KNOW HIM BEST
The T.O. show touches down in America's most real city
If you really want to know what Terrell Owens is like, you should talk to the two strong women who are good friends, business partners and co-stars of his upcoming VH1 reality show, “The T. O. Show.” After all, Kita Williams and Monique Jackson sat in a downtown Buffalo hotel room with a pajama-clad Owens at 2 a. m. Monday to talk about his excitement after being greeted by about 200 Bills fans after midnight at Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
They’re the ones who know that he picked up the Bible to read while waiting through a three-hour flight delay in Cincinnati. They’re the ones who know whether Owens thinks he’ll only be a Buffalo Bill for one year. And they’re the ones who know best about his split personality—as the more outrageous T. O. who makes headlines and the homebody Terrell who plays Connect Four.
Williams and Jackson, who previously worked together at Def Jam, are the public relations and marketing brains remaking Owens’ image. They have known him for years and said the airport reception captured by VH1 cameras overwhelmed Owens and surprised them.
“I honestly felt [at the airport] like I was an animal in a petting zoo that was rare,” Williams said during a joint interview Monday at the hotel where Team Owens is staying. “And that people wanted to touch it, feel it, get close to it. ... It felt like a family reunion.”
“He said this was the first time that he’s ever had fans embrace him like that,” Williams added. “Right now, he’s trying to process that.”
Williams believes that the smallness of Buffalo could end up being a positive for Owens, who previously played in San Francisco, Philadelphia and Dallas.
“The love, the kindness, the caring part, people don’t see that,” Williams said. “With Buffalo being a smaller city, they’ll be able to embrace that and do what no other city has done. And that is have him retire here.”
Making adjustments
That’s right, Williams doesn’t believe that Owens expects to be a one-year wonder in Buffalo. “He has his mind-set being a Buffalo Bill,” said Williams. “I don’t think that has a time frame on it.”
Owens’ change from being a Dallas Cowboy to a Buffalo Bill has meant that the show that Williams and Jackson started pitching five years ago to MTV (before it landed at sister station VH1) had to make some adjustments as filming began here Monday at some of the more picturesque sites in Buffalo. However, the essence of the show remains the same as it was when Williams and Jackson began pitching it.
“I thought people know who T. O. is, but they don’t really get a chance to look inside Terrell Owens,” said Williams, who with Jackson runs a marketing and public relations firm called Team Image. “And if you get a chance to see who he is, he’s likable, he’s lovable. Unfortunately, with all the background media and the archive of sound bites, it’s kind of hard to assume that this person has more to him than what you see on ESPN.
“We pitched the idea this man has everything in life you can possibly have, but the one thing money can’t buy is respect, integrity, love, happiness. You can buy anything else you want. All we wanted is to give Terrell Owens a fair chance of having more than just a football career.”
‘It’s just family’
When MTV saw the pitch, they decided the attractive, funny and opinionated women had to be part of the show.
“They filmed him, and they realized his life does not move personally or professionally without us,” Jackson said.
“They felt we were funny,” added Williams. “And with us, a side of him comes out that people don’t see, and that’s when you see who Terrell is. When you see him around us, we’re like a three-headed monster. In a good sense.”
“Everything kind of overlaps,” added Jackson, whose husband is one of Owens’ friends. “We started out as friends, then we started working together. We pray together, we play together. He’s my first son’s godfather. ... It is just family, that’s what we are.”
Neither is too shy about giving Owens advice, with Jackson more like Owens’ mother and Williams more like his sister. In a 20-minute VH1 presentation that has made the cable rounds, Williams and Jackson are very forceful in advising him about his love life.
However, the move to Buffalo has altered the old game plan for the series somewhat.
“Now it is more than just his love life,” said Williams, “but loving life, loving where you are, understanding who you are and embracing that. It is not just about him finding love. But that’s a big part of what he needs.”
“It is about finding love within,” said Jackson. “The love of where you are, just in life. It’s kind of showing Terrell, as well as T. O., as he navigates through life. And we are like the monitors.”
“It’s the relationship with his parents, the relationships with his children, the relationships with the women he’s dated in the past or might be interested in now,” added Jackson. “It’s the relationship between Kita and I. It’s the love with life, real people who are in his life.”
“We joke and we say we’re married to Terrell, but we’re trying to marry him off to the right person,” Williams said.
Williams noted that Owens was influenced by having a difficult childhood growing up in a small town in Alabama, which may have formed some of his insecurities and actions as an adult.
“So what you’ll see from the show is you’ll take a step back to analyze why T. O. is T. O. on the field and why no one ever sees who Terrell Owens is until you see the show,” Williams said.
Homebody
The two sides of Owens can confuse some of the women he dates.
“The women in his life think they are going to get T. O,” explained Williams.
“And they get home, it is Terrell Owens,” Jackson said. “We play Connect Four, we pretend we’re on ‘Oprah’ and being interviewed and do all kinds of things to entertain ourselves in a family way.”
Of course, Williams and Jackson have heard the speculation is that Owens won’t connect with Buffalo because there isn’t enough potential excitement for him here. They seem unconcerned.
“Buffalo is something that is necessary for him,” Williams said. “Where he is in life, he needs to take a slower pace, and this pace in Buffalo is probably going to be the pace that he needs, whether it is the one he thinks that he wants.”
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