‘I Am Very Angry’: Gayle King Unloads on CBS as She Faces Attacks Over Kobe Remarks
CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King unloaded on her own network in a video she posted to her social media accounts this morning. At issue was an interview clip CBS teased online on Tuesday, in which King asked former WNBA star Lisa Leslie about Kobe Bryant’s sexual assault case — a line of inquiry Bryant’s fans did not appreciate. King claimed the clip was taken “out of context.”
“I am mortified, I am embarrassed and I am very angry,” King said in the video. “Unbeknownst to me my network put up a clip from a very wide-ranging interview totally taken out of context, and when you see it that way it’s very jarring. It’s jarring to me. I didn’t even know anything about it. I started getting calls: What the hell are you doing? Why did you say this? What is happening?”
One critic was Snoop Dogg. “Gayle King, out of pocket for that shit,” he fumed in a furious Instagram video, adding: “Why y’all attacking us? We yo’ people. You ain’t coming after fucking Harvey Weinstein asking them dumb-ass questions. I get sick of y’all. I wanna call you one. Is it OK if I call her one? Funky dog-haired bitch! How dare you try to torch my motherfucking homeboy’s reputation. Punk motherfucker! Respect the family and back off, bitch, before we come get you.”
Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash on January 26, was accused of raping a 19-year-old in a Colorado hotel in 2003. The case was dropped, but a civil suit was later settled out of court.
In the video, King claimed that she had been advised “to say nothing” and that she should “just let it go.”
“But that’s not good enough for me,” she added, “because I really want people to understand what happened here and how I’m feeling about it.”
King reached out to Leslie, she explained, because the WNBA player was a longtime friend of Bryant’s. King wanted to talk about Bryant’s legacy, which included the rape case.
“It’s been said that his legacy is complicated because of a sexual assault charge which was dismissed in 2003, 2004,” King asked Leslie in the clip. “Is it complicated for you, as a woman, as a WNBA player?”
“It’s not complicated for me at all,” Leslie said. “Even if there’s a few times that we’ve been at a club at the same time, Kobe’s not the kind of guy, never been like, Lisa, go get that girl, or tell her, or send her this. I have other NBA friends that are like that. Kobe, he was never like that. I just never see — have ever seen him being the kind of person that would be — do something to violate a woman or be aggressive in that way.”
Despite the backlash, Leslie was “OK with the interview,” King said in her social media post this morning.
“For the network to take the most salacious part when taken out of context and put it up online, for people who didn’t see the whole interview is very upsetting to me, and that’s something I’m going to have to deal with with them. And there will be a very intense discussion about that.”
“This was so important to me that I felt I had to say something,” King concluded. “I don’t want to sit up on a set and read a prepared remark. I wanted you to hear exactly where I’m coming from and how I’m feeling — and to let everyone know that no disrespect intended. And now I’ve gotta go to work.”
In a statement to Mediaite, a CBS spokesperson said: “Gayle conducted a thoughtful, wide-ranging interview with Lisa Leslie about the legacy of Kobe Bryant. An excerpt was posted that did not reflect the nature and tone of the full interview. We are addressing the internal process that led to this and changes have already been made.”
The spokesperson did not elaborate on what those changes were.
