Lamar Odom's 2009 relationship with actress Taraji P. Henson is often overshadowed by his 2009 wedding to Khloé Kardashian (the two later split in 2016). The athlete has never shed much light on how exactly things went down between himself and the two women — until he sat down for the TV One series Uncensored.
"I met Taraji at an HBO party... and we hit it off right away. And I really, really, really, really started liking her," he revealed. "I just wish I would've done things different with her."
First, he praised Henson, saying that the relationship was "the most significant" that he ever had with a Black woman.
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"I used to carry her picture on the road with me, nobody know that," he revealed. "She gave me inspiration, you know... a Black woman working like that, that is just as good as her craft that I'm as good as mine."
Henson notably now stars on the Fox series Empire, and back in 2009 had appeared in movies like I Can Do Bad All by Myself and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. However, things went between them south due to him being "an immature punk."
"I didn't know how to tell her that I was falling in love with another woman named Khloé Kardashian," Odom said in the interview. Refinery29 has reached out to Henson and Kardashian for comment.
Odom has been doing a lot of reflecting recently after releasing his memoir Darkness to Light. While much of it is about his relationship with Kardashian, she doesn't begrudge his need to share his truth.
“I’m fine. It’s his truth, like, he’s allowed to tell his version,” she says in the most recent season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. “Him and I each played a significant role in each other’s lives, so I think it’s natural, like if I talk about my past I would hope my marriage would be a chapter I'd talk about.”
In fact it is, in Khloé Kardashian's own kind of memoir: reality TV.