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Tina Knowles loves being a grandmother to Beyoncé‘s three kids — but she’s not so much a fan of how the world turned on her daughter when the superstar was first expecting.
In an interview with People published Tuesday (April 22) — the same day the businesswoman’s new memoir, Matriarch, hit shelves — Knowles opened up about how widespread rumors Bey faked her pregnancy with firstborn Blue Ivy in 2011 marred the experience for the entire family. “Babies and children are so precious and so sacred,” the designer began.

“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 — it was one of the worst times of my life, because I couldn’t say anything,” Knowles continued. “My daughter was saying, ‘No, you’re just going to make the story bigger.’ But it didn’t go away for a long time.”

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“It’s one of the most painful things for me, to know that people could be that disgusting,” she added, noting that the incessant pop-culture rumor mill has remained an ever-present challenge for her as a mom. “I deal with lies all the time. I’m dealing with lies now, that I’m having, like, an invisible zipper at my mouth. 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.”

Rumors that the “Texas Hold ‘Em” musician was pretending to be pregnant originally took off after she appeared on an Australian talk show in the fall of 2011. As she sat down for the interview, her dress folded in such a way that some viewers thought it looked like a fake baby bump caving in on itself, leading to inescapable chatter and frame-by-frame analyses from people who were convinced that Bey was lying. Even after Blue was born in January 2012, some haters still theorized that the vocalist and Jay-Z had welcomed her via surrogate.

At the time, Bey’s publicist shot down the rumors as “stupid, ridiculous and false,” while the 35-time Grammy winner added to People months later, “That was crazy. It wasn’t hurtful, it was just crazy.” The musician and Roc Nation founder are now also parents to 7-year-old twins Rumi and Sir — but more than a decade after the fact, Ms. Knowles — who was honored as Mother of the Year at 2025 Billboard Women in Music — says that the 2011 controversy still angers her, especially knowing that her daughter suffered multiple pregnancy losses before Blue came along.

“The worst thing is that people had no idea how hard it was for Beyoncé to go through multiple miscarriages, and then when finally blessed to carry a baby to term, the world starts heckling you as you both try to make it to the finish line,” she writes in Matriarch, according to snippets published by The Independent. “This child was prayed for and prayed over — a wanted, cherished, real baby, and people were making a living off saying she was a lie.”

“I wanted to curse some people out and scream at these losers to set the record straight,” Knowles adds in the book. “They had no idea what she and Jay, and our whole family, had been through.”