Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives star says there's one traveller value 'people better learn'
Sixteen years on since My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding first hit out screens, there’s a new ‘proudly Gypsy family’ reality show on the block.
The six-part Channel 4 series centres around 25-year-old Trewley-Precious, who has made a name for herself across social media.
But she says Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives is completely different to the notorious show from back in the day as it’s all about ‘travellers getting with the times’.
The influencer lives on a council estate in Clacton-on-Sea with her mum and sisters but stands apart from many of both them and their community as she refuses to conform to the traditional expectations – she doesn’t have a man and kids of her own, she's carving out her own career and she's talking about taboos that she's supposed to stay hush-hush on.
Advert
However, while Trewley subverts some of the values, there’s a particular one she believes we could all do with picking up, emphasising the importance of good manners.
Ahead of the show’s release, the straight-talker spoke to LADbible about the Gypsy traditions she has strayed from as well as the ones she values.
And while she says ‘some traveller families are different’, her parents were ‘so strict’.
“We didn't have a lot of things, but one thing I did have was manners,” Trewley, who lives in a chalet in her mum's garden, explains. “And you’ll never catch me not saying ‘thank you’. You’ll never catch me not saying ‘please’.”
As Trewley’s values around family and community are clear in the series, there’s this real emphasis on being polite that’s ingrained into her.
“I don't care what you work as - a McDonald's worker, a bin man, whatever you are, I respect you,” she adds.
“I've got manners and you know obviously, some travellers - like any community - some people lack with that and some people have that.
“But I think everyone should have manners. I don't care where you're from, I don't care what it is, I don't care if you're from an estate and you ain't been taught it - you better learn it because I can't have that around me.”
After her dad’s death three years ago, Trewley began to feel like she ‘could question things’ about the traditions she’d been born into.
“When you have someone that is the head of the household that runs the rules, and we were raised that we couldn’t question the men, so I couldn’t question what was said,” she explains.
But with her dad a lovingly missed figure, there are still things Trewley says she won’t explore or do because she is ‘so programmed’.
While the first episode of Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives saw her breaking the rules and getting a belly button piercing, she would still ‘never get tattooed’.
“I don’t even know if I like them a lot, I was just told that women ain’t allowed them,” she adds. “It’s just like little things from programming. Everything, my whole life has been revolved around these rules so it’s really hard to try and unprogramme myself.”
But as the series goes on, it sees Trewley exploring this a little more as she carves out her own career for herself on social media.
However, many of her dreams revolve around helping her family and the council estate where she has lived her whole life. She never wants anyone to go without and they are always at the forefront of her mind.
And ahead of Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives airing, she wants people to know: “This show is nothing like Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, it's not exploitative, if anything it's actually really bigging our community up.”
Trewley says she has faced backlash in the build-up though, with members of her community fearing exploitation.
“It’s nothing but positive vibes,” she says of the series. “It’s not even just about Gypsies, it’s about us being from this deprived area, us trying to make it out, us losing our dads - the whole show is like an onion there's just so many layers to it.”
The star continues: “I'm representing different people, I'm representing Gypsy girls, I'm representing the poor council estate kids, I'm representing the big girls trying to get confidence, I'm representing the TikTokers and influencers. I'm not just representing one community, I'm representing all of them.”
Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives begins on Channel 4 at 10pm on 20 July with all episodes available to stream On Demand.
Topics: Channel 4, TV and Film, TV
Jess Battison