Gayle King is opening up about her viral interview with R. Kelly. The co-host of “CBS This Morning” made an appearance on Showtime’s “Desus & Mero,” where she recalled the sit-down with the singer, which was based on the sexual assault allegations made against him by some of the women who appeared in the Lifetime docuseries, “Surviving R. Kelly.” King told the hosts of the show that she thought we were “watching him having a breakdown in real time.” She also said that she didn’t think Kelly’s reaction to their conversation was “fake.”
“I never thought that he was gonna hurt me, guys. But when he was doing this,” she said, as she mimicked a punching motion. “I thought he might accidentally hurt me and I was worried about that because he’s, you know, you could tell that he hits hard.”
Gayle continued, “So I just sat there like this thinking, ‘I don’t want to move.’ If somebody does that to you, you can just very gracefully or discreetly go like that, but I knew I couldn’t make any sudden movements because he was very amped up, as you see.”
Since the release of King’s interview with Kelly, the singer’s legal issues have continued to mount. An arrest warrant was issued for him last month after he missed a court date in Minnesota due to him being incarcerated in a Chicago prison. Kelly’s attorney Steven Greenberg spoke to TMZ about Kelly being a no-show in court and revealed that no one came to get Kelly to transport him to Minnesota. “They never came to get him, wtf was he supposed to do, telepathically transport himself?” Greenberg said.
On another note, Kelly has also been accused of hiding money in a friend’s bank account. Earlier this month, we reported that Kelly was allegedly hiding large amounts of cash in a childhood friend’s bank account. According to The Blast, prosecutors claimed that per their evidence, Kelly had been diverting his music royalties to a third party. They also said that Kelly’s “contention that he has ‘almost no financial resources’ is also misleading.”
Most recently, Kelly was denied bail by a Brooklyn judge. His NYC trial has been set for May 18, 2020 and he will remain behind bars until then.