“TLC Forever” took about 2 ½ years to create, and about 30 years to percolate.
The new documentary that delves into the triumphs and tragedies of the trio who crafted nine Top 10 hits – was there a radio station in 1999 that didn’t spin “Unpretty” and “No Scrubs” in relentless rotation? – lands Saturday on A&E and Lifetime (8 p.m. ET/PT) with an affecting wallop.
Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas guide viewers through the group’s early days as baggy-clothed stars whose fresh blend of hip-hop and pop helped solidify Atlanta’s standing as a music capital, their massive success with albums “CrazySexyCool” and “FanMail” and the tragic 2002 death of member Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes.
In between the headlines are reality checks about health, abortion, births, adoptions, restaurant affiliations, grueling tour rehearsals and everlasting friendship.
Watkins shared some insights about “TLC Forever” – which repeats at 5:30 p.m. (ET/PT) on Sunday and streams on Lifetime – and why she and Thomas “are not going away.”
T-Boz talks about the severity of her health challenges
The frank Watkins reminds early in the film that doctors said she wouldn’t live beyond 30. Born with sickle cell anemia, her life has always included the intervention of medicine and treatment. But cell phone footage of her in a hospital room, five days before the 2021 launch of TLC’s Celebration of CrazySexyCool tour, is jarring.
Watkins, 53, said she decided to share the personal footage – and talk more extensively about her condition, as well as the benign brain tumor she had removed in 2010 – because she’s “in a different place in my life.”
“Maturing over the years and realizing how many things I have triumphed over makes you start reminiscing, like, dang, I got through that and that?,” she says. “I just thought I might as well tell people so they’ll understand and hopefully it will help someone.”
TLC kicked off a summer tour with Shaggy, En Vogue and Sean Kingston June 1 and Watkins says her regimen includes a massage therapist to make sure her blood properly circulates, stretching, holistic vitamins and inhaling oxygen pre- and post-show.
Her children, Chase, 22, and Chance, 7, will join her – Chase created the Anela Beauty line and is handling TLC’s makeup for the tour – which makes road life more palatable.
“Just being able to have them with me is a blessing,” she says.
Why Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes would be the ‘female Kanye West‘
Toward the end of the two-hour documentary, Watkins sits with Thomas and jokes that if Lopes, who was killed in a car accident in Honduras, were alive today, “she’d be the female Kanye West.”
Indeed, vintage footage throughout the film spotlights Lopes’ fierce personality and blunt commentary about everything from her desire to stretch creatively from TLC to her inflammatory relationship with former Atlanta Falcons football player Andre Rison, whose mansion she set on fire.
Watkins laughs affectionately when asked to elaborate on her Kanye comment.
“I said that because Lisa was always just saying things. If she had Twitter fingers, she’d be all over the place and have something to say about everything and not care. She’d be making all of the shocking comments,” Watkins says. “And Kanye was the only comparison I could think of about what my sister would be like now.”
TLC’s legacy still has more chapters
Still recognized as the most successful U.S. female group in music history, TLC receives plenty of flowers from peers including Questlove, Missy Elliott, Jermaine Dupri and Dave Grohl.
The Foo Fighters frontman is a friend who TLC met overseas, but more importantly, has a unique viewpoint on grief, having lost band members Kurt Cobain and Taylor Hawkins.
“He totally can sympathize with what we’re going through,” Watkins says.
But along with that string of hits – “Waterfalls,” “Creep” and “What About Your Friends” still conjure good vibes – and regular live performances, TLC has more to do, as Watkins and Thomas assert in the documentary.
A new album is unlikely – 2017’s self-funded “TLC” was tagged as their last – but Watkins says there is always room for new TLC music, including for a Broadway play about their history currently brewing.
She is characteristically resolute when she declares, “Just know that we’re not going away.”
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