THIS IS Honey Boo Boo Now!

ALANA THOMPSON IS SPEAKING HER MIND ABOUT GROWING UP ON REALITY TV, HER MOTHER'S CRIPPLING ADDICTION, THE DEATH OF HER SISTER AND HOW TODAY, AT 19, SHE'S CHASING HER COLLEGE DREAMS: 'I'VE PERSEVERED PAST WHO PEOPLE THOUGHT I WAS'

- JANINE RUBENSTEIN

Before It All Changed "In the beginning, for a little while, being on TV was all about fun," says Alana (above, with Mama June and, right, photographed in Los Angeles on May 7).

It’s rare to see the exact moment a star is born, but for Alana Thompson that moment is etched in TV history. She was 5 years old and filming an interview on TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras when she quipped, “A dollar made me holler, honey boo boo!” Then a rambunctious spitfire on the Georgia pageant circuit, “I don’t know why, but I said it off the top of my head,” she recalls. The one-liner birthed her nickname and helped land her a spinoff reality show. “‘Honey Boo Boo’ stuck, and she’s been there forever.” But today Alana is a calm and reflective young adult. Honey Boo Boo makes small, fleeting appearances throughout her People interview—a giggle here, a slight neck roll there—but Alana, now a 19-year-old college student, is no longer a caricature of her own making. She’s also seen enough to know the world isn’t all trophies and tea parties. “Looking back it’s like, ‘Dang, I really went through all that s---? That’s crazy.”

For well over a decade the highs and heartbreaking lows of her family’s life have been documented on TV. After her Toddlers breakthrough, Alana became the focus of