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Throughout our conversation, Robin held nothing back and no question was off the table as she offered thoughtful, sometimes emotionally charged, humorous, and reflective insights on her journey through womanhood and Hollywood. You took years away from the spotlight to focus on being a mom to your two sons. Now you're back with two television shows, the CW's Riverdale and the new OWN series, Ambitions. I remember speaking with Elisabeth Shue years ago and she said she went away to just be a mom to her three kids, and when she came back, she felt like the parade passed her by. How did you come back with the thunder? Robin Givens: I don't know Elisabeth and I don't know her story so well, but for me, it wasn't only taking a break to raise my kids. It was also a break for myself. It's true that you feel like you are going to maintain your place in line; like everything is going to stop and wait for you. I had to realize that it's a process again. You have to enjoy the process and begin again, and I really fell in love with acting again. When I first started acting, it wasn't really like that. Now, I can go in a room and act and do my thing and enjoy the process for what it is. Water seeks its own level. If you're good, you're good, and it all kind of begins again. Your new show, Ambitions is premiering June 18th on the OWN Network. It seems like Oprah has always championed your career. Even when the chips were down, she was a champion for your career. You worked with her as an actress, and you were also on the Oprah show quite a bit over the years. RG: I feel like at one point we were just friends. We did do [the mini- series] The Women of Brewster Place [1989] together, which was a huge role for me. She and I developed a genuine friendship, just as women. I don't think it had anything to do with my career, per se. I do think that there is something to it coming full circle and being here with her now, doing this show on her network. Do these vixen roles find you or do you seek them out? How do you always wind up playing that women? I don't know how else to put it (laughs). RG: [Laughs] You're right. There was a time when I was having these roles come to me and I remember saying to my agent, "I don't want to do that women. I just did that woman." I ended up turning something down because of it. I'm nothing like these women that I play, which is unusual and interesting for me. I always jokingly say, "I want to grow up and be them." Where I am now in my life, emotionally, it's like, "Okay, you want me to do that? Then I'm going to do it to death," and then wait for the opportunity where I can do something completely different. Before I do an interview, I'll ask people if they have any burning questions for the person I'm about to interview, and sometimes I'll take people's questions into consideration. I found out that a lot of men out there think you are that woman. Do you know that? RG: I think women think that too; I don't think it's only men. Whenever I'm in hair and makeup, they're always like, "My God, you are nothing like that person!" Me, Robin, I have a whole different rhy thm. Your energy is completely different from your media image. But your name is still synonymous with Mike Tyson, the divorce heard 'round the world and those infamous interviews. RG: I have a better understanding of it now than I would have if you talked to me about it fifteen years ago or even ten years ago. As a grown up, I just understand it better. I also didn't give people any thing else to talk about for a while, and so my image got stuck there. I ran into Jay-Z at a party years ago, when I was doing Chicago on Broadway, and even he was fixated on it, because it was just so big. People love to talk about your past relationships, not just with Mike Tyson, but with Brad Pitt and Eddie Murphy. Do you play on that image for a role like your character, Stephanie Carlisle, on Ambitions? RG: You're making my life sound way more exciting than it is, but no, I don't. I know we are in this world where we want things to be tantalizing, but I am a big believer in truths. The one thing I agree with when it comes to our current state of politics is that there has been plenty of fake news. I feel like I was the original fake news. I would be a crazy person if, given what I went through in my past, I didn't believe in the truth. I would never approach working on a character with any sense of that… thing, or that time period that wasn't even true. I lived through a time of absolute bullshit at a very young age. I now have a son who is 25, who I see as a baby. I was younger than that when all that craziness was happening. Certainly, I hope it made me the person that I am, but I don't think I would have been able to say that before. And you probably didn't have the tools at that time to get the facts out there the way you wanted to. RG: I was speaking with Wendy Williams recently and she said to me, "Thank God social media wasn't going on at that time in your life." And I said, "You know, actually, it would have been easier." Now, you can literally get on Twitter and say "Hey, that's not true!" I was a bit taken aback when in speaking with some people before our interview, the general consensus was, "She did Mike Tyson dirty years ago." RG: The only thing I did dirty was that I said, "I don't want to be in a relationship where you tell me you are going to kill me." I didn't take one cent from my ex-husband. I left my panties there; I left my favorite teddy bear there. I left every thing I had in that house. The rest is fake news. I said, "I want out of this relationship because I think you are going to do what you said, which is kill me." When I see what happened to Nicole [Brown] Simpson and other women that I talk to, that is a very real thing. I am here, walking, living, and breathing. And it was thirty years ago, people. You've had so much going on since then. You have your two boys, a thriving acting career, your advocacy work for women. I'm proud of you. RG: Thank you. It is a really interesting conversation to have, because my ex-husband used to say to me, "I'm a hero to the guys. Women love me and guys love me. I'm a star to the stars." It's hard to go up against all of that. I left with my life, and I left