Tina Knowles Slams Past Beyoncé Fake Pregnancy Rumors

Tina Knowles is here to clear the air—and she’s not sugarcoating anything. While promoting her brand-new memoir Matriarch, Tina got real about one of the most painful chapters of her life: the nasty rumors that Beyoncé faked her first pregnancy. In a recent interview with PEOPLE, she called the conspiracy theories “disgusting” and “painful.”

The drama started way back in 2011, after Beyoncé appeared on an Australian talk show. When her dress folded a certain way, some people started questioning if she was actually pregnant. Beyoncé’s publicist quickly shut it down, calling the speculation “stupid, ridiculous, and false.”

Tina didn’t hold back her feelings either. “Babies and children are so precious and so sacred,” she said. “To hear people say the most horrendous things and to call my whole family a lie, because we would all have to be part of that conspiracy and lie about something so sacred.”

At the time, Beyoncé begged her mom not to speak out. “My daughter was saying, ‘No, you’re going to make the story bigger,’” Tina explained. But staying silent wasn’t easy. “It’s one of the most painful things for me, that people could be that disgusting.” She even described it as “one of the worst times in my life because I couldn’t say anything.”

And sadly, Tina says dealing with false stories never really ends. “I deal with lies all the time. I’m dealing with lies now, that I’m having, like, an invisible zipper at my mouth to talk about things now because there’s always these crazy rumors that are out there and people just get to lie and they don’t have to suffer any consequences, you know, it is very sad.”

In case anyone forgot: Beyoncé gave birth to her daughter Blue Ivy Carter in January 2012 and later welcomed twins Rumi and Sir in 2017.

Tina also shared with PEOPLE that she wasn’t even sure about writing a book at first. "I didn’t want to write a book because I thought [people] only want to know all my kids’ business. They’re not going to be interested in me,” Knowles told the outlet. But she had a change of heart. “I’ve lived this incredible life, and you really don’t realize it until you start writing everything down.”

Matriarch is out now