In her first official sit-down since the controversy over her comments about Kobe Bryant, Gayle King discussed how the situation affected her during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, for the 2020 Vision Tour over the weekend.
Winfrey revealed that the fallout was hard to witness as King’s best friend. She also asked the CBS This Morning host what she learned from it all.
“It rocked me,” King told Winfrey on Saturday (March 7). “I always try to operate from [a place of] ‘do no harm.’ That was certainly my intention in doing that story and that interview and the intention certainly didn’t align with the impact of the fallout that happened from that.
“But what got to me was the vitriol and the vulgarity that was unleashed at me in ways that I couldn’t even understand where that was coming from. You may disagree with a story or the way I do a story, but it’s just not fare or okay to be as vulgar and as hateful as what I experienced.”
The veteran journalist continued, “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.”
King caught heat for prodding WNBA legend Lisa Leslie about Bryant’s past rape allegations a week after his death. Although King’s interview with Leslie discussed Bryant’s legacy the portion of their talk in which she brought up Bryant’s dismissed case went viral and resulted in a verbal attack from Snoop Dogg and a subsequent apology. “It certainly was a learning curve and it was very painful,” added King.
Despite social and political disagreements King said that she believes that “humanity should prevail always.”
Watch a clip of the interview below
Gayle King on the Kobe Bryant backlash:
”what got to me was the vitriol & the vulgarity that was just unleashed at me in ways that I couldnt even understand. I think we can disagree politically, we can disagree socially but I think humanity should prevail always” (📹:@ETCanada) pic.twitter.com/hnZJJZ5Xsx
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) March 9, 2020