Allison Holker’s teenage daughter, Weslie Renae, is speaking out about her “irreplaceable” relationship with late stepdad Stephen “tWitch” Boss and addressing criticisms of her family — from why she doesn’t use his surname to why her mom requested his family sign funeral NDAs.
More than two years after Boss died by suicide in 2022 at age 40, online criticisms of Holker, 36 — and what she chooses to share about her late husband’s life and struggles — have ramped up as the mom of three prepares to release her upcoming memoir, This Far: My Story of Love, Loss, and Embracing the Light in February.
In response, Holker’s 16-year-old daughter decided to address the claims leveled against her family in a live video on Instagram on Friday, Jan. 10. Weslie, whom Holker welcomed prior to her relationship with Boss, began the video about the late dancer by calling the “hate” she and her mom are experiencing baseless and “hurtful” to her siblings — Holker and Boss’s children Maddox Laurel, 8, and Zaia, 5.
“My stepdad’s been gone for two years and I’m still getting hate comments … it’s just complicated and for no reason, because this is not just a social media gig, this is literally my life,” Weslie explained, adding that she’s “sick of getting hate comments and seeing my mom get hate for literally losing the person that she loves.”
As for her own relationship with her late stepdad, she said “this is my dad — this is not a joke to me.”
“For 13 years, my parents were together, and for 13 years he was the person I would go to about everything,” she said of Boss. “He’s the person I would cry to. He’d wake me up every morning, we’d get breakfast. He’s the person that I would see when he came home from work with. We lived in the same four walls and now I’m getting hate for him leaving, and I don’t get it. It’s hurtful.”
“And I guess I’m trying to describe our relationship because I see people saying that it’s not my place because I’m not his biological daughter, but he never made me feel like anything besides his daughter,” she continued. “I just think it speaks for who he was and nobody’s sitting up here trying to bash him. He was a good person.”
As for why she does not use Boss as her surname on social media or in general, Weslie explained that it has nothing to do with their father-daughter relationship. “My legal last name isn’t even what is my handle,” she said. “It’s just my middle name because I don’t go by ‘Boss’ or my last name and I never have.”
Weslie, her siblings, Holker and Boss were referred to as “the Boss family” and that’s “the name that my siblings are going to have and that’s what they’re going to carry on,” she explained, “but even Stephen’s family, like his parents, they don’t have the last name Boss.”
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Beyond her personal relationship with Boss — and her mom’s — Weslie also addressed a recent claim from the late dancer’s family, who alleged that Holker made them sign an NDA before they could attend his funeral.
“Basically, one day we had an open casket viewing for Stephen. We had a funeral and then we had a wake, and my mom asked for NDAs to be signed when we were seeing Stephen’s body because God forbid somebody that went to that took a photo of Stephen and put it on the internet or shared it with somebody else — that’s the type of things that NDAs are for,” she explained.
“It’s not so you can never talk about Stephen, you can’t ever talk about you grieving him, you can’t post about it. That’s not what it is. And for all the people saying it, I just feel like you’re uneducated,” Weslie continued, adding that she’s “fed up because NDAs are so important.”
“If you guys don’t agree, that’s cool. I’m grateful for my mom making sure that everybody signed NDAs and she put up that rule,” she said. “But also regardless, some people didn’t even sign the NDAs and my mom was lenient because she understands at the end of the day, this is family, so you all want to disrespect her and she’s still nice, she’s still kind, she’s still forgiving.”
The current discussion around the NDAs is “annoying,” Weslie went on to say, because “that whole day was supposed to be beautiful. And instead it was less than that. We were going to say our goodbyes and instead people were yelling at each other and bashing my mom.”
Elsewhere in the video, the teen also defended her mom from online criticisms about the way she has opened up about Boss’s mental health and addiction struggles ahead of the release of This Far.
“My mom gets called a murderer. They say that she’s money hungry. They say that she needs more fame. That’s not how my mom is,” she explained. “Trust me when I say my mom is good, she doesn’t need that.”
The 16-year-old finished her video by both reiterating her love for Boss and requesting respect for the way her family is discussed online, particularly for her younger siblings’ sake.
“Whatever you all want to push on social media, I’m going to grow up seeing it, my siblings are going to grow up seeing it. And also they’re going to have to form their own opinion of who their dad was,” she said. “And we only speak about him in such a beautiful light. I loved him. I have nothing negative to say about him besides I think that he made an unfortunate decision and it’s unexplainable.”
“But here’s the thing,” she said. “My siblings, they’re strong kids and my mom’s raising them, raising them to be so strong. I am already my own person, but I’ve been this way. They’re growing up with one parent and to see that one parent get torn down, it’s crazy. I don’t get it. I don’t get it because my mom is all we have.”
“We have other family, we have other people we can go to, but through this, my mom’s been our rock,” she continued. “So just know that that’s the type of person you’re tearing down, who’s been peaceful, who’s kept things off the social media.”
As for sister Zaia and brother Maddox — who Weslie said is “getting to the age where he’s able to realize things” — she said, “I just don’t want social media battles to infringe on how they see their dad or how they see their mom.”
“They need their mom and they already lost one parent,” she said of her siblings. “They can’t lose another one.”
And, despite concerns and criticisms about how Holker has discussed Boss in the media or her upcoming memoir, Weslie assured that “that’s not to ever bash who Stephen was — it’s literally my mom telling her story, and her story is also still going to continue.”
Plus, Weslie added of her stepdad, “My relationship with Stephen is irreplaceable. And that’s just how I see it.”
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.
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