What Happened to Honey Boo Boo? Now a Nursing Student in 2026

If you watched reality TV in the early 2010s, you knew her instantly: the sparkly toddler with the unmistakable Southern drawl, declaring “a dollar makes me holler” on Toddlers & Tiaras before headlining her own TLC circus, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. For a few years, Alana Thompson was one of the most recognizable kids in America. Then the cameras moved on. So whatever happened to Honey Boo Boo? The short answer is the most surprising one of all: she grew up, moved across the country, and is studying to become a nurse.

01Profile

Here’s the thing about Alana Thompson: most people who remember her are still picturing a six-year-old. The woman behind that nickname is now in her twenties, living a life that looks almost nothing like the one TV gave her.

02The Rise

From the pageant stage to a national phenomenon

Alana first landed on TV in 2011 as a contestant on TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras, the child-pageant series that thrived on outsized personalities. She had one to spare. Loud, funny, and completely unbothered, she swiped energy drinks she called “go-go juice,” coined catchphrases on the spot, and stole every scene she was in. Audiences couldn’t look away, and neither could the network.

By 2012, TLC had handed the then-six-year-old her own spin-off: Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, a show built around Alana and her family in rural McIntyre, Georgia. Her mother, June Shannon, became famous in her own right as “Mama June.” The series followed the family’s day-to-day life, complete with coupon hauls, mud runs, and a vocabulary of inside jokes that fans repeated for years.

A pop-culture lightning rod

The show was an instant talking point. At its peak, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo pulled in millions of viewers and, on at least one occasion, reportedly drew bigger numbers among certain demographics than major cable news coverage of a political convention. Critics argued endlessly about whether the series was celebrating its subjects or exploiting them. Either way, the family was inescapable, landing magazine covers, talk-show couches, and a permanent spot in the reality-TV hall of fame.

For Alana, all of this happened before she’d finished elementary school. She didn’t audition for fame so much as wake up inside it. That detail matters, because it shapes everything that came after.

03Stepping Away From the Cameras

The cultural moment didn’t last forever, and the way it ended was messy. In 2014, TLC canceled Here Comes Honey Boo Boo amid reports concerning Mama June’s personal life. The cancellation pulled the rug out from under the franchise that had made the family household names.

What followed were years of turbulence that played out, in part, on other reality shows. Mama June’s struggles with substance abuse became public, and the family’s path was anything but smooth. Through it all, Alana was a minor, growing up in the glare of a spotlight she never chose. As she got older, she began speaking more openly about how strange and difficult that experience had been.

2011Alana debuts on Toddlers & Tiaras and becomes an overnight sensation.
2012Here Comes Honey Boo Boo premieres on TLC, built around Alana and her family.
2014TLC cancels the series; the family's path grows turbulent.
2017The family returns to TV in other reality projects as Alana enters her teens.
2023Alana finishes high school and sets her sights on college and a nursing career.

By the time she reached her teens, Alana had made a decision that quietly separated her from the rest of her family’s story. She wanted out of the reality-TV cycle, and she wanted something steadier in its place.

04Reclaiming the Story

A big part of Alana’s adult life has been about taking control of her own narrative, and 2025 gave her the clearest chance to do exactly that.

The Lifetime biopic

On May 17, 2025, Lifetime premiered I Was Honey Boo Boo, a biopic that Alana herself narrated. Rather than another fly-on-the-wall reality format, the film let her look back on her childhood from an adult’s vantage point. It dug into what she has described as the darker side of growing up famous: the constant criticism, the family struggles, and the gap between her on-screen confidence and what was really happening off camera.

Talking about why she wanted to do the project, Alana framed it as a way to step out from under the labels that had followed her for more than a decade.

I love that I’ve persevered past who people thought I was. — Alana Thompson, to People, 2025

Where things stand with Mama June

The biopic also touched on the most complicated relationship in Alana’s life: the one with her mother. The two have had a famously rocky history, and Alana has previously spoken about money she says went missing from her childhood earnings. But by 2025 she described their bond as cautiously hopeful, crediting Mama June’s recovery.

“She’s been super clean. I’m very proud of her,” Alana told ExtraTV in May 2025, adding that her mother had been sober for several years and that they stayed in regular contact through daily group texts. She summed up the relationship plainly: “We’re going pretty good. Hopefully it lasts.”

It’s a measured way to talk about a parent, neither a fairy-tale reconciliation nor a permanent break, and it tells you a lot about how grounded Alana has become.

05What She Is Doing Now

Here’s where the Honey Boo Boo story takes its most unexpected turn. The kid who once seemed destined for a lifetime of reality TV has, by her own choice, walked away from it to chase a very different goal.

A college student studying nursing

As of 2026, Alana is a college student in Colorado, attending Regis University in the Denver area and working toward a nursing degree. She’s spoken about wanting to work with babies and young patients, and her motivation is deeply personal: she has cited the care nurses gave her late sister, Anna “Chickadee” Cardwell, during Anna’s battle with cancer, as well as the example set by another sister who went into nursing.

“I’ve wanted to be a nurse for a long time,” she told ExtraTV in 2025, describing her aim of one day working in a pediatric ICU. It’s a striking ambition for someone who could have coasted on name recognition alone, and she’s been candid that college life comes with ordinary college problems, from coursework to finding parking on campus.

Building a quiet adult life

Alana has also been open about her long-term relationship with her boyfriend, Dralin Carswell, whom she has been dating since around 2020. Speaking to ExtraTV in May 2025, she said the couple were approaching their fifth anniversary that December and had talked about marriage, but were in no rush.

We are going to wait probably until at least I finish college. — Alana Thompson, to ExtraTV, May 2025

That sense of patience runs through everything she says these days. She moved states for school, settled into a routine far from the cameras, and has framed her education as the thing that finally feels like hers. As she put it to People in 2025, “I just always told myself that you want to do something better with your life and bigger with your life than just being on TV.”

She hasn’t disappeared from the public eye entirely. She keeps an active presence on Instagram, where she shares glimpses of college life with more than a million followers under the handle that made her famous. But the version of Alana you’ll find there is a young woman in her twenties, not the catchphrase machine the internet remembers.

06Summary

The story of Honey Boo Boo turned out to be a quiet kind of triumph. A child who was famous before she could fully understand what fame meant grew into an adult who decided, deliberately, that she wanted a different life, and then went and built it. There’s no scandal at the center of where she is now, just a college student with a goal and the discipline to pursue it.

Alana Thompson in 2026: Quick Facts

Now 20, she's a college student in Colorado attending Regis University.
She's pursuing a nursing degree and hopes to work in pediatric care.
Her 2025 Lifetime biopic, I Was Honey Boo Boo, let her narrate her own childhood story.
She has been in a long-term relationship with boyfriend Dralin Carswell since around 2020.
Her relationship with Mama June has cautiously improved amid her mother's reported sobriety.
She remains active on Instagram, where she shares her college life with over a million followers.

It’s easy to assume former child stars are frozen in the era that made them famous. Alana Thompson is proof that some of them simply grow up, log off the spotlight, and go do something they actually care about. The “dollar makes me holler” kid is studying to take care of patients now, and honestly, that might be the most Honey Boo Boo plot twist of all.