Jenelle Evans Talks Taking Her Story Into Her Own Hands After ‘Teen Mom 2’ (Exclusive)

Jenelle Evans is taking her story into her hands for the first time after spending the last decade filming her life for 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom 2. Speaking exclusively to PopCulture.com Tuesday, Evans revealed she is finally “having fun” sharing her life after getting serious about her YouTube channel amid her contract “limbo” with MTV.

“I’ve kind of been in limbo for a year since last April, and I’ve been wanting to venture out and do my own things, and people are like, ‘Why aren’t you?’” Evans told PopCulture. “I’m stuck to this contract, and once I’m out of it, I can go and talk to other companies and stuff.”

“It’s not just other companies,” she continued. “I’m not gonna lie, MTV, they’re iffy about if they really wanna let me go or not. So I’m just sitting here, doing my own thing trying to keep YouTube updated, because my fans, they want to know — they’re digging into my life, and they want to know what’s up!”

Filming at home and with her kids — son Jace, 10, Kaiser, 5, and 3-year-old daughter Ensley — Evans feels like she’s found her groove away from filming schedules and production.

“It’s really awesome actually, because then it’s not like I’m worried about what’s about to air,” she told PopCulture. “Are people gonna judge me? Am I parenting right or wrong? It’s all about what I want to do — I make my own schedule, and I do what I want, and I share what I want.”

“That has been awesome for me,” she added. “Because it’s like I’m having fun with it, versus when I was on Teen Mom it was just kind of like, ‘Get the camera out of my face, I’m mad right now.’ Now it’s, ‘Hey, I’m happy, let’s go do something fun. Let’s film something fun.’ And whenever you try to suggest that to MTV, it gets tossed out.”

The reality personality certainly isn’t missing the drama of Teen Mom filming, she added, as she focuses instead on “happy” and “funny content.”

“They have you film with people that you don’t necessarily want to film with — you’ve got the baby daddies, the grandparents, the exes, just constantly, something’s always going on,” she recalled. ‘When you involve kids and marriages, divorces, trying to co-parent… I mean you’ve got drama there no matter what. I’m trying to steer away from that right now.”

Showing this other side of her life has gotten Evans “a lot of good, positive feedback,” she says, as well as people who wish she had started her YouTube channel earlier to show off her “happy and bubbly” side.

“I’m getting more to open up on YouTube versus Teen Mom as well,” she noted.

Photo credit: Getty / John Lamparski