‘CBS This Morning’ co-anchor Gayle King has discussed what she called her ‘painful’ Kobe Bryant interview backlash with her best friend Oprah Winfrey.
“I have moved on,” King told Winfrey on Saturday’s final stop of the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN)’s 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus Tour.
“Is there a scab? Yeah. But I have moved on,” she said.
Following the tragic January 26 helicopter crash that killed Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others, King interviewed Lisa Leslie, a friend of Bryant.
Although the interview was wide-ranging she did ask about the 2003 rape accusation against Bryant and whether it had tarnished his reputation. The NBA start was charged with raping a 19-year-old hotel worker who then refused to testify, killing the case.
“Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did,” Bryant said at the time.
King’s decision to drudge up the case in the interview with Leslie backfired as various celebrities including Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent rounded up on her.
King said she had no choice but to “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.”
Winfrey defended her fiend saying in times like this; “It’s not the people who are being mean, it’s not the badness, it’s not the vitriol that’s being put into the world, but it’s the good people who remain silent that becomes so hurtful.”
King shared the same sentiments; adding, “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.”
Winfrey applauded her best friend saying “I love that you said through it all you never questioned who you were.” And King replied, “No, I absolutely didn’t, Oprah.”
