Detroit-based home renovator Nicole Curtis addressed her use of a racial slur and recent removal from HGTV in an appearance on the the morning radio show “The Breakfast Club.”
In the March 10 episode of “The Breakfast Club,” Curtis told the hosts Charlamagne Tha God, DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious and Loren LoRosa the word is not a part of her vocabulary, that she often makes up words to say instead of curse words, and that she did not intend to say what she said.
“I was raised (that) we don’t use that word. I know that I don’t use that word. I don’t use that word. Why? I’m white,” Curtis said.
Throughout the episode of at times tense back and forth, the hosts challenged Curtis’s explanation of what happened and ask her for accountability.
“You’re doing a lot to humanize yourself, and that’s cool. I know you feel like you have to do that, but the use of the N-word, saying [expletive], dehumanizes people like us and that’s the real conversation we should be having right now,” LoRosa said at one point in the show.
The hosts asked Curtis to teach Black investors, entrepreneurs, and contractors in her future work in Detroit.
What is the controversy?
Nicole Curtis has been rehabbing homes in Michigan and around the United States on her show “Rehab Addict” since 2010. The first episodes of Season 9 of the show, where she rehabs homes in Detroit and Wyoming, were released in June 2025. She postponed the show for the summer in July.
On Feb. 11 in the afternoon, episodes three and four aired on HGTV. A clip of Curtis saying the N-word after making a mistake in a house she was working on surfaced from Radar News and went viral later that afternoon. HGTV removed Curtis from its platform on the same day.
In the video Curtis says, “Oh fart n—–.” After saying that, she immediately says, “What the f— is that that I just said? Nick, you gotta, can you kill that?”
She has since said someone she knew personally leaked the clip from 2022 as blackmail.
What did ‘The Breakfast Club’ ask Curtis?
The hosts of the morning radio show started by asking Curtis, “What is a ‘fart n—–?'”
“You know, I have no idea. I have no idea. It isn’t anything that I’ve ever said before, and so I don’t have any idea,” Curtis said.
LoRosa said later in the show that it’s a privilege to not know what you’re saying.
“When I first heard this, I was just like okay, this is another white lady who just is racist or doesn’t understand what she’s saying, whatever, and you have that privilege to do that,” LoRosa said. “We don’t have the privilege to not understand what we’re saying, why we’re saying it.”
Curtis said when she started filming for TV in 2010, there wasn’t a “bleep” option for swearing, so she started making up words and phrases to say instead. She said she has also spent a lot of time around kids and doesn’t want to swear around them.
“I couldn’t swear so I’ve always made up these words. … I don’t have a rhyme or reason of the words that I make up. Like I say nonsense stuff all the time,” she said.
Curtis said she has “absolutely not” used the racial slur without the fart, and the people that know her know that is not something she would say.
She said she lives in Detroit, has been around people who use the word and listens to music with the word.
“I’m not some token white b—- that walked down the street and decided I’m gonna go to Detroit, I’m gonna shoot a show. I’m in Detroit. I had to fight to go to Detroit. I went to Detroit before Detroit was trendy,” she said.
Charlamagne Tha God asked Curtis why she brought up her ties to Detroit and times she’s met Black rappers.
“What are you trying to prove here when you keep saying you’re from Detroit and you’re around rappers and your best friends are Black?” Charlamagne Tha God asked Curtis.
“Even in this moment, you may not mean anything by saying, I live in Detroit I live in neighborhoods that people wouldn’t want to go to and talking about all these thing, but because you have the privilege, you have to be very aware of, even if you didn’t get caught saying the N-word on this video, it still would come off as very privileged and very imbalanced because it’s different for us,” LaRosa said.
One host asked if the person who leaked the clip was Black. Curtis said he was not.
‘Small blip’
Curtis said if she regularly said the slur or acted a certain way, it would have come out in the last 30 years she’s been in the industry.
“If that’s something you’re known to be or something like that, there’s already stories out there about it,” Curtis said. “And I’ve said, ‘find someone who’s ever heard me use that word in the context or have that type of mindset,’ and you won’t.”
Curtis, who grew up in Lake Orion, has said for years she is from Detroit. On “The Breakfast Club” she said she currently lives in Detroit.
She said she knows who she is and didn’t appear on the show “to convince anyone or sell myself as a good person.”
“Fifteen years of my life I spent on TV, but let’s say I lived to 100, that’s just a small blip and that isn’t what defines me. I don’t, at the end of the day when I’m buried, I don’t want people standing up and being like, ‘I loved her TV show.’ No, [expletive] that. I want people to say she was an amazing mom, an amazing human and ‘she just lived life to the fullest.’ So that doesn’t ruin my life. I know for a lot of people, that would ruin their life.”
Contact Natalie Davies at ndavies@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Nicole Curtis explains racial slur on ‘The Breakfast Club’ radio show
Reporting by Natalie Davies, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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