Bobby and Whitney get real on `Being Bobby Brown'

Monday, June 27th 2005, 1:21 pm

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ TV viewers have peeked into the lives of Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, and Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. Now another celebrity couple is about to take the reality show plunge.

``Being Bobby Brown,'' which features Brown and his wife, pop songstress Whitney Houston, premieres on Bravo Thursday (10 p.m. ET).

In an interview on ``Dateline NBC,'' Brown said he decided to allow cameras to follow him for six months because ``it's easy for people to just have the freedom to be able to say things about me, and me not say anything. That's the easy part.

``But the hard part is to show them me, because I'm scared of being myself, sometimes.''

Brown, a former member of New Edition, married Houston in 1992. He took off with singles such as ``Don't Be Cruel,'' but progressively became known more for his drug and alcohol arrests.

On Dec. 7, 2003, Houston called police, alleging that Brown had struck her in the face at their home near Alpharetta, a suburb north of Atlanta.

``Me and my wife play a lot. It was just a misunderstanding,'' he told Matt Lauer in the NBC interview that aired Sunday. ``I mean, we slap box, and she hits hard, hard.''

When asked if he hit hard back, Brown responded: ``No, I don't. No, come on man, you see how big my hands are? I could hurt her. Huh-uh, no. Me and her are like this. She hits me more than I hit her.''

How did the 41-year-old Houston, who recently completed a drug rehabilitation program, feel about doing the reality show?

``When she saw how much fun I was having with the cameras, I mean, because it's like, I didn't change when the cameras got around, it just _ it _ I think it brought us close together, because it showed us that we're just normal.''

Brown, 36, said the couple are ``two addictive personalities.''

``Heh, it's a daily struggle, and it's just as hard as it is for anybody else, just like somebody that wants to stop smoking, you know, cigarettes. It's hard. It's going to be hard for us also, you know?''