“I love that I can own my moment and it’s mine. I own my mistakes, I own my day, I own my choices,” shared Tanee McCall.
The 33-year old is enjoying her newly-single life; but just a few months ago, she was embroiled in an ugly domestic abuse incident with her estranged husband, former “Scandal” star Columbus Short. McCall filed a restraining order against her husband this past spring; according to documents, Short held a knife to his wife’s throat on April 7 after coming home intoxicated. He questioned her about men he believed her to be sleeping with and threatened to kill her and himself. McCall had filed for divorce last September, before changing her mind. In April, she filed again and Short moved out of their home.
Fans of “Scandal” were rocked by the accusations and Short, who’d also had other legal troubles over the previous several months, was subsequently fired from the hit ABC series. Speaking to rolling out exclusively, McCall talked about moving forward, but also spoke about the realities of abuse and the consequences that those in the public eye have to face in the aftermath of that abuse. Does she believe that celebrities who commit acts of abuse should lose work because of it? Absolutely.
“I think you have to take it [on a] case-by-case basis. Someone can say anything — anyone can make an accusation,” McCall says frankly. “You’re innocent until proven guilty. It’s hard for me to comment generally. [But] if proven true and real, then personally — yeah.”
McCall added that the demographic that “Scandal” targets plays a part in why things happened as they did.
“It’s ABC and it’s Shonda [Rhimes] and it’s Disney and it’s a female audience,” she says. “I understand why that decision was made”
“It was not ‘just an incident.’ I don’t want to comment about Ray Rice [and his wife] because I don’t know them, but I don’t believe that an incident is just an incident. One incident is too many incidents. I don’t think a man just whoops up on a woman one night and never does it again and has never done it before.
“In the beginning, you can’t help but go ‘why?’ and I felt very victimized — over and over again. It was not an empowering feeling. When I decided to switch that off and focus on me and my daughter and what I can control; whenever I tried to put that helmet [back] on and speak for [Short] and wonder about him, it set me backward.”
So McCall isn’t preoccupied with trying to “figure out” her ex-husband or why he did what he did. She’s focused on her future, and she says she believes wholeheartedly that love will be a part of that future — even if marriage isn’t.
“Oh my God, yeah — absolutely,” McCall says when asked about her ability to love again. “My heart is very open. I’m a very loving person. I don’t know necessarily about marriage–the institution of that. I don’t know if I think it’s necessary. But I know for sure that there will be a love in my life.”
And what would she want for her daughter, Ayala? Is she more skeptical about her chance to find happiness after all that Tanee herself has gone through?
“I would be OK, with whatever — man, woman — as long as she’s happy,” McCall says. “I’m a very free spirit and I’m for whatever makes you happy as long as you’re not hurting other people.”
