Shortly after Kobe Bryant’s death, Gayle King found herself in the middle of a whirlwind of controversy when she decided to bring up his past sexual assault allegation while interviewing Lisa Leslie. The backlash from her questioning was immediate and extreme—well now, she just revealed what the experience was like in a new interview with her bestie Oprah Winfrey.
@People reports, on March 7th during the last stop of her “Oprah Winfrey’s 2020 Vision: Your Life In Focus Tour” in Denver, Colorado, Oprah interviewed her best friend Gayle King about the backlash, specifically the death threats, harsh comments and various attacks of her journalist integrity. Gayle recalled how things were “very painful” to deal with when the fallout happened.
Gayle had this to say:
“I have moved on. Is there a scab? Yeah. But I have moved on. I put on my game face and my big girl pants, because I never lost sight of who I was, what I believe I am, and my intention. I’ve never lost sight of that. But it certainly was a learning curve, and it was very painful.”
She wasn’t done and added more to her initial statement:
“I think we can disagree politically, we can disagree socially, if you want to, but I just think humanity should prevail always. I think we still have to figure out a way to navigate that with each other. That we can disagree, and you can be mad at me even, but you can’t speak to me the way I was spoken to and threatened.”
As you’ll recall, one of Gayle’s harshest critics was Snoop Doog, who later apologized for his comments during an appearance on Jada Pinkett-Smith’s “Red Table Talk.”
Roommates, what are your thoughts on this?
