No longer a wisecracking child beauty pageant star, Alana Thompson is trying to shed her “Honey Boo Boo” persona and show the world that she’s more than the sum of her reality-show parts. In the summer of 2021, readers learned through Teen Vogue that Thompson has become a self-assured young woman who excels in school and hopes to study nursing in college.
Her maturity also includes having a boyfriend. According to the US Sun, Thompson has been dating Dralin Carswell, a college student, since 2021. At age 20, Carswell is a full four years older than Thompson, but that detail doesn’t bother Mama June. “They’ve been together over a year,” the matriarch told TooFab. “People need to realize that she’s fixing to be 17 in August, and that Pumpkin [Alana’s sister Lauryn] and [husband] Josh were the same age as they were.”
Mama June added her opinion that the real issue people have with her daughter’s relationship is that Carswell is Black. “She is getting a lot of hate because she’s in an interracial relationship, he is older, but at the end of the day, Alana’s not that 6- or 7-year-old child y’all fell in love with 11 years ago,” June said.
She went on to hint that fans who want to learn more about Thompson — and the rest of the family — should plan to watch the new season of “Mama June: Road to Redemption,” which airs May 13 on WEtv.
