The very popular Love&Hip Hop: Atlanta begins its new season (that’s season number three for those of you counting) on May 5th. But beyond the heralded return of the popular VH1 reality series, there has been plenty of attention for the show these past few weeks. Vivid.com has just released a ‘sex tape’ featuring two of the shows’ stars, Mimi Faust and Nikko Smith called Mimi & Nikko: Scandal in Atlanta (see here: Vivid.com ). With the site Worldstarhiphop seeing over 12-million visitors logging-on to spy a clip from the tape and the VH1 show seemingly going to feature some of the fall-out of Nikko and Mimi’s ‘encounter’, this new Vivid release of the couple enjoying steamy sex in a hotel room chair, “hip-hopping” into bed for some backdoor teasing and ending with a hot shower session is getting mad press to be sure.

I was lucky enough to get a sit down with Mimi about all this attention…and so much more.

I guess it would be safe to say the past few weeks have been crazy. Has it been a case of all press-even bad press-is good press?

I just took what’s been coming over the past few weeks and kept moving beyond the backlash of the tape. I heard as much “Oh my god she’s so classy, how could she?” to a whole bunch of support. But no one has heard my side, everyone has been speculating about why and how it happened.

Do you want to tell me your side? I’d love to get the real story right from you directly.

Nikki and I taped ourselves on vacation when we were in the Bahamas. He checked two bags back with us on the plane, but when we landed in Atlanta one bag was gone. That bag had the footage in it; I didn’t even know the footage was in that bag. Believe me, when he came to tell me, it was a bad day for him…and me.

And then the whole tsunami started?

Well about two weeks later we were contacted by Vivid and they said they had the tape and wanted to sit down with us. So we flew to L.A. for a meeting with Steve Hirsch (Mr. Hirsch is the head of Vivid) and he was very clear. He said you can have this tape out there on the net for free and not get compensated or get paid for it and we had to make a decision if we wanted to do business.

I’m fully aware that if I wasn’t on T.V., if I wasn’t in the public eye nobody would care about this, but since both Nikko and I are, we needed to do business with a company like Vivid, who has taken care of this kind of a thing before. We figured let the professionals handle this, as we had no idea what to do in this regard.

So how does this all work with the show? How did the ‘outting’ of the tape go down at VH1?

We of course had to let VH1 know that the tape was coming out, they incorporate it into the show, but VH1 had nothing to do with the tape.

So you are actually still filming series three right now?

Yes, we’re in the middle of it actually. We film while the show is airing. I think they are even adding four more episodes, we’ll be filming to September.

Is that usual for a reality show to air the same season it is still filming?

Well Love&Hip Hop has one of the longest filming seasons. I think those Housewives shows usually film for about four months, last season we filmed for nine, this year will be longer.

Tell me what other things are happening for you. I know you are a very busy entrepreneur.

My cleaning business is going great. I’m writing a book that’s almost finished, I have one more chapter to go, it’s about my life. I have a children’s apparel line coming out, and quite a few other opportunities.

So it is a clear case that while on T.V. and in the public eyes, one needs to work their personal brand as best they can?

Absolutely, yes.

It certainly sounds like in the end you’re going to weather this storm….in fact you seem to have pretty much already.

I did a lot of crying about this. I went through all the emotions you can think of: anger, sadness, you name it. But in the end you just have to own it. Make lemonade out of lemons and move on.

Most of my friends and family have stuck by me-the few that didn’t let me know where they were at as far as being not true friends-but the majority of my friends and family support whatever my decision and I feel so fortunate to have that kind of support.