Some of you may remember when actors, Malinda Williams (best known for Soul Food and The Wood) and Mekhi Phifer (best known for ER, Soul Food, Paid in Full, and 8 Mile), had more than just a thing going on like Billy Paul and ‘Mrs. Jones,’ they actually took it all the way- got married and had a baby- a little boy named Omikaye Phifer. Although they went on record to let the world know that their marriage was pretty rocky (DETAILS BELOW), they happily co-parent their who is happy, healthy kid and lil’ Omikaye ain’t so little no more, he is 17 years old now and looks like an has even blend of both of his parents’ features. Check him out…
Throwback and current pics of Malinda Williams with she and Mekhi’s son, Omikaye…
Current photo of Mekhi Phifer with he and Malinda’s son, Omikaye (L); his son from another relationship, Mekhi Jr.; and his wife Reshelet (she’s not the mother of his youngest son)…
Now here’s the deal with their rocky marriage: Mekhi and Malinda married in 1999 and officially divorced in 2003. Mekhi actually referred to them being married (from a connection and emotional standpoint) for only about a year. But even though their relationship didn’t last, they are now very cool with each other and successfully co-parenting Omikaye.
Throwback pic of Mekhi Phifer and Malinda Williams with their son, Omikaye…
It took them a minute to get to that “cool” space though and soon after their separation, they both kind of put bach other on blast about why their relationship ended. In 2003 Malinda did an interview with Honey Magazine to let the world know that Mekhi was having a LOT of trouble keeping his manhood in his pants when she wasn’t around, if you know what I mean…basically she said implied that he was gettin’ busy with women left and right and living the “Single Life” like Cameo during their union.
That same year, Mekhi shot back and went on record to say that Malinda didn’t support his career and that he basically got to a point to where he couldn’t stand going home to her and all of the tension. Here’s what Mekhi stated in 2003 about their split:
“I was 23 when she got pregnant. You want to do the right thing – what society deems as being the right thing. She wanted a structured family lifestyle that she was used to growing up. The women are dominant matriarchs in her family and the men are subversive, subservient and subdued. Me? I come from a family of men – grown-ass men handling their business.
“It’s easy for a woman to say, ‘He cheated on me and did this and that.’ Look, I’m a very sexual person – I love to make love. In the morning, stink breath? I want to make love. At night after champagne, I want to make love. Women have to let men be men, not walk over them. If you are dealing with a yellow-bellied, no backbone muthaf***a, then okay. I’m a mover and a shaker – a king.
“I didn’t want to be home anymore. We had nothing to talk about because she didn’t know the people I knew. Any argument that we had, 90 per cent of the time, I didn’t know what the f**k she was talking about. There was just tension in the house and she couldn’t be sympathetic. I didn’t ask her to cook, clean, nothing. I had cleaning ladies, all that s**t.
“But if you want your man to be there with you, you have to be there with him too – a stimulus for a muthaf***a. For most of the relationship, I was the mover and shaker, she was home complaining.
“I was young. I had an ideology of what I was doing, but it wasn’t the right thing with that particular person. She’s a great mom; I’m a great dad. But we weren’t made for each other. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
Now Mekhi says he and Malinda are now in a much better space and when he did an interview with The Breakfast Club in 2014, he also indirectly finally admitted to cheating, just like Malinda said he was doing in her 2003 interview:
“I can’t front arguing at home and going through all of that because we were both young and with both our A-type personalities—but we’re really good peoples now. We’re better off, like we’re happily divorced, we’re better off friends and we’re raising our son together.”
“At the time it was crazy. For a lack of a better term, you’re traveling and girls are throwing it at you and sometimes your catching it,” he confessed. “[I wasn’t cheating] the whole time but you know we were only married for less than a year.”
“There was a point where because I bought us a house and we were living on opposite sides of the house. We were technically married but you’re going two or three days living in the house and you aren’t even talking to, you talking about walking up and down the stairs past each other and you aren’t even talking.”
After their divorce, Mekhi says he was actually relieved:
“I was kind of relieved. I had developed this bald spot in the back of my hair because I was stressed and I didn’t even know it was stress. But once we got separated and I didn’t make it hard, I left her with the house and all of that and just left. I left with my clothes and my whip so then I was cool.”
They did the right thing obviously, because when a relationship gets so bad that the woman knows she can’t trust her husband farther than she can throw him and the husband is balding from the stress, it’s probably time to call it quits…or else give a 1000% to toughen it out together and pray that the problems disappear.
Malinda and Mekhi have both moved on. Malinda was married to rapper D-Nice from 2008-2010, but they have since divorced and she’s happily living up the single life now.
Mehki had his second son, Mekhi Jr., with his then-girlfriend, Oni Souratha, in 2007.
After he and Oni broke up, Mekhi eventually married his wife, Reshelet and they have no children together as of yet.
