A few years ago YouTuber and social media influencer Tana Mongeau was making videos with her parents. Now, she no longer talks to them because they sued her.
Although this stressful situation started in 2019, Tana Mongeau has only recently opened up about the situation. Two months ago Tana appeared on the H3H3 podcast and explained the situation to Ethan Klein.
She signed a “non-disparagement” agreement with them, but can still carefully talk about the situation if she chooses to.
Tana grew up in Las Vegas, and had a wild childhood. She says that when she turned 13 she started staying more with her best friend’s family. She says that her parents failed to provide her with guidance and structure, and attributed that to contirubing to why she dropped out of school.
Tana says she heavily related to Jeannette McCurdy’s book I’m Glad my Mom Died (affiliate link.) Ethan pressed Tana about whether or not she would be glad that her mom died. She said she wouldn’t, but she recently found out that her mother is sick.
Tana said that while she felt like her mother never loved her, she started crying over the possibility of her dying. She had a lot of therapy about this very difficult subject, and it’s help her come to terms with the fact that she thinks she shouldn’t have to bring peace to someone who didn’t bring her peace.
In 2019 Tana’s parents Richard and Rebecca Mongeau sought millions in damages from Tana for slander. Tana says they were upset about some things she said on her MTV reality show MTV No Filter: Tana Mongeau.
“If I go home to my family for Christmas, then I have to do everything,” Tana said during an episode of the reality show. “And I don’t want to do that. I’m 21.”
Tana’s friend Ashly Schwan asked her what that mean, and Tana replied that she’d always been the one to decorate, cook, wrap presents, putting up the tree,and all the other labor required for a holiday celebration.
“I grew up in Vegas with two parents who were completely unfit to be parents, and I still in so many ways just want nothing to do with them,” Tana explained on the show.
In the interview with H3, Tana says that all the things she’s said about her parents were itemized and she had to go line-by-line defending her statements. One of the things called into question was that she shared she’d gotten a lot of dental work when she moved to Los Angeles and could afford to have the work done. She didn’t come right out and finish the statement about why she got dental, but got choked up and couldn’t continue on.
Tana says that she said some things on the show that could be argued in court that might create a “loss of income,” which she believes is untrue. She sees the lawsuit as a “cash grab.”
Tana has also spoken out about her dad in particular in a storytime YouTube video titled “finally opening up about growing up/my insane dad,” which was published January 17, 2018. One of the things she spoke about in the video was how her dad would tell her that YouTube was going nowhere.
The lawsuit happened during peak times of COVID, so all the proceedings had to happen over Zoom, and she says all of this took a major toll on her mental health. She found herself having to dredge up stuff from her past that she had “put to rest.”
Tana ended up settling with them instead of going through the ordeal of a trial. She didn’t want to endure the years in court and the public trial that would result from fighting her parents further. She also just didn’t want to see or talk to her parents again and have to watch them defend everything during a trial. She was grateful that there was a mediator there for her during the process so she didn’t have to directly address her parents.
Tana said she ended up paying them a “couple hundred thousands” dollars.
After that, Tana says that she felt awful and considered her parents dead to her. She’s extremely grateful for her friends and their families for supporting her during these difficult times in her life.
Tana thinks that her parents didn’t have a happy marriage at all, but were “trauma-bonded” to each other.
Tana’s therapist has helped her work through a lot of the issues she has about her parents.
