Tina Knowles Bravely Defends Beyoncé from ‘Folding’ Baby Bump Rumor 13 Years Later

Tina Knowles, mother of Beyoncé and Solange Knowles, spoke out to defend her older daughter in an interview clip with Gayle King released by CBS on August 24, 2025.

The interview was part of Knowles’ promotional press circuit for her new book, “Matriarch,” that hit shelves April 22.

The “Ring the Alarm” singer’s mother surprisingly spoke out on a subject the family hasn’t publicly addressed before: the vicious rumors that surrounded Beyoncé’s pregnancy with Blue Ivy Carter, 13, after a viral interview moment.

Speculation was sparked when Beyoncé appeared on the Australian talk show “Sunday Night HD” in October 2011 after famously announcing her first pregnancy in August of that year during a VMA performance of “Love On Top” which she ended by opening her jacket to reveal a bump.

The starlet, wearing a hot pink bodycon dress, was filmed at an angle that puzzled some fans while leaning forward to sit down in the interview chair.

Tina Knowles ‘Enraged’ By Rumors That Beyoncé Was Faking Pregnancy

“The ridiculous rumor was she went on a show in Australia or something and she had this very broadcloth-type dress, and she wasn’t huge pregnant. She was very proud of her little stomach. And she bent over, and the fabric of the dress bent,” Knowles explained.

She went on, “Of course it fell to the front and bent. And they started this vicious, horrible rumor that she wasn’t pregnant. That she wasn’t carrying the baby.”

The doting mother, who considers Beyoncé’s former Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland her third “bonus daughter,” told King pregnancy is considered “something so sacred” in her family and emphasized the way her clan “values babies.” She fumed that a fake pregnancy would have made everybody around her superstar daughter “complicit to a lie.”

Knowles said the she had “never been so enraged” as she was when the rumor hit.

Beyoncé Experienced Two Pregnancy Losses Before Having Blue Ivy

“What they didn’t know is that my child had been through a couple miscarriages which were so painful,” Knowles told King. “It was so painful, and that you’re gonna take something so sacred, when she finally should be so happy, and take it and turn into fodder for gossip. It was horrible,” she said on the verge of tears.

Knowles went on to reveal that she felt helpless during the gossip flurry, because Beyoncé didn’t want her to intervene. “My kids are gonna have to read that someday. You’re gonna make it a bigger story,” she said the Ivy Park founder told her.

In a February 2013 sit-down with Oprah, Beyoncé revealed why she chose to publicly share her experience with pregnancy loss in her “Life Is But A Dream” documentary. “I felt like there are so many couples that go through that, and it was a big part of my story,” said the songstress. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve been through,” she added, before saying she feels “so fortunate to have my daughter.”