Lil Rel Howery said he’s never been a fan of fellow Chicagoan R. Kelly and that was way before he was slapped with multiple charges relating to sexual impropriety.
Howery was a guest on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Wednesday, where he talked about working on the video for “Trapped in the Closet,” Kelly’s R&B opera.
Besides being charged with 21 counts of misconduct in the state of Illinois, Kelly has been hit with several felony charges, and they all came after the docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly” aired in January.
Kelly was accused of sexual, physical and emotional abuse in the release, and he’s also been accused of controlling the women he’s been with, which Howery said he witnessed.
“I did stand-in work for R. Kelly’s ‘Trapped in the Closet’ series. I did stand-in for the cop Michael K. Williams,” he began. “For years everybody was like, ‘Rel, why don’t you like R. Kelly like that?'”
“It was another stand-in, a young lady that was actually one of his background dancers for a couple of his tours,” Howery continued.
“And we were just talking the whole time, getting to know each other, laughing and having a good time. But every time she laughed, I found him just, like, staring at me. So we come back to set the next day right and she’s not talking to us at all,” he explained.
Howery then asked the women if he did something wrong and why she wasn’t speaking to him.
“‘He doesn’t want me talking to y’all no more'” he said she told him. “And I said ‘Who?’ ‘Robert.’ … So she didn’t talk to us the rest of the time we were filming it and it was just crazy and I remember him smirking about it.”
But that wasn’t the last time Howery would be in the same place as Kelly, because they both ended up at John Singleton‘s birthday party, where the disgraced singer sent someone over for an introduction.
“I guess he wanted to meet me, and he sent somebody to me and we were all in this VIP area … ‘Man, I’m good,'” Howery remembered saying.
“It wasn’t even about the allegations with me,” he added. “He was so extra like that sometimes, and I ain’t like that. Everybody knows I’m from the West Side of Chicago, and I own who I am. That’s too much, bro. Just come speak to me, fam … To send somebody that was just so weird to me.”
On the career front, Howery will be starring in the upcoming film “Bad Trip” with Tiffany Haddish and “Fatherhood” with Kevin Hart, both expected to be in theaters next year.
As for Kelly, he’s pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
