LOS ANGELES — Angela White is radiant.

When shes walks up to our table at a cafe in Calabasas, there are no cameras and no filters. She is petite with a big personality and laugh. Her face is flawless and exudes warmth when she smiles. She is happy. Really, truly happy with the Angela she is now.

She is honest that media interviews are not always her favorite thing. Not when she has been burned before. Not when her openness hasn’t always been met with graciousness or kindness. But she has slowly but surely aimed to open up more. After all, she has nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of.

The price of White’s beauty over the years could be best summed up in needles, injections, fillers, burning sensations and judgment. When White was in the thick of getting cosmetic procedures, they didn’t hurt. But when she videotaped herself getting her cheek fillers removed last March, the reality TV star said it stung and burned.

The needle pricks and breast and butt reduction surgeries within the last year are the cost of change that White was determined to undergo physically, emotionally and spiritually in a less than kind or forgiving media environment. But whatever you call this phase of her life — a transformation or metamorphosis, or whatever you decide to call her — Blac Chyna, Chyna or Angela will do — White is eager to see who she will become.

She initially considered this to be her soft girl era but has changed her mind about that. She is calmer, more patient and focused on herself. Hell, she’s even taken up running in an effort to do the things she’s long hated. She will look you in the eye and tell you without a doubt, this is not a trend, this is who she is now.

“I was hiding Angela, because I had just been hurt so much throughout the years,” White said when we first met with her last September. “I feel like as a woman in this industry, people will try you, they will try to walk all over you and make you seem less than or that you’re not capable of doing certain things, and that’s just other people’s insecurities. And when their insecurities rub off on you, then you kind of start looking at yourself different.”

White first hit the celebrity scene more than a decade ago as a 19-year-old exotic dancer who became Nicki Minaj’s music video stunt double; she eventually became a video vixen after rapper Drake saw her working in a Miami club and shouted her out in the song “Miss Me.”

She then became a reality television star, making headlines in 2016 when she started dating Kardashian brother Rob and became pregnant. That led to the couple’s E! reality show “Rob and Chyna,” which documented their relationship, which went from promising to rocky during production, and they later split up. She has also been part of the cast for the BET reality show “The Black Hamptons.”

White was also at one point on the subscription site OnlyFans when the pandemic hit in 2020; there, she posted adult-only content. White told Forbes in a previous interview that she made $2 million in a two-year time span on the platform. She deleted her account in 2022 as part of her personal journey and out of concern for her children. In addition to her daughter with Rob Kardashian, White has a son, Cairo, with her ex, rapper Tyga.

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