TMOG’s Mackenzie Edwards Claims MTV ‘Only Cares About Money’ After Coparenting Drama and Firing

Teen Mom OG alum Mackenzie Edwards (née Standifer) vowed to never return to the show after she and husband Ryan Edwards were fired, claiming the drama is too much to handle.  

“I don’t think it’s OK to use stuff that Bentley has got going on emotionally for a dollar,” the TV personality, 24, who now works as a sales representative in Tennessee, told The Sun in a new interview, before saying that “they’ll use their own children to make a buck.” 

Mackenzie clarifies to In Touch that what she “meant” is that MTV “uses everyone’s very real emotional distress as a way for them to make a buck,” noting that she was not talking about Ryan’s ex Maci Bookout McKinney in this instance.

“We didn’t want to film about the therapy thing [because] that’s something that should be private, hence the pushback,” she adds. “All MTV cares about is money. And no, I’m not cool with that; I’ll never be cool with that.”

Mackenzie also told The Sun that “life has been great” since they were let go in March 2021, revealing the network couldn’t “pay me enough money to go back” on the series. 

“I just can’t get down with a false narrative about our own lives and I’m happy to be gone,” she shared about the show’s editing. “The things that I was seeing on TV didn’t match up with real life, especially in what pertained to me and Ryan.”

Mackenzie and Ryan, 33, as well as his parents, Jen and Larry Edwards, announced they were fired earlier this year after struggling to get along with Maci, 30, and her husband, Taylor McKinney, throughout season 9.

Maci and Taylor, 32, are parents to two kids, daughter Jayde, 6, and son Maverick, 5, in addition to her 12-year-old son Bentley shared with Ryan. As for Mackenzie and Ryan, they share daughter Stella, 19 months, and son Jagger, 2, and she also has a son of her own, Hudson, from a past relationship.

“I’m just done, and I think that all that they care about is money,” Mackenzie said following her family’s reality TV departure. “I have values, and I have morals, and I’m just not OK with it anymore.”

“I would work until my fingers bled before I went back,” she added.

The Sun, MTV, Maci and Taylor did not immediately respond to In Touch’s requests for comment. 

Ryan recently claimed that he had some drama with the Teen Mom OG production team in the weeks leading up to his family’s firing.

However, the I Wasn’t Born Bulletproof author previously shut down claims she caused a further wedge in their strained father-son relationship. “I mean, obviously everyone is entitled to feel how they want to feel or [to] have their own opinion,” Maci told In Touch exclusively in January after claims that she had “convinced” Bentley to stop spending time with dad Ryan’s side of the family. 

“Honestly, I have not raised him to give anybody the ability or the power to influence him, not even me,” she said about her son being an individual. “Really nothing else to say.”