Oprah Winfrey recently visited the “Today with Hoda and Jenna” show and gave some insight on how her bff Gayle King was doing after fierce backlash over her Lisa Leslie interview.
This week, King sat down with the WNBA superstar and discussed many things including her friendship with Kobe Bryant and his 2003 sexual assault case. Bryant died in a helicopter crash on Jan. 26 and Leslie suggested that the media should “be more respectful at this time.”
King was met with heated criticism from celebrities and the public over the interview and eventually responded to it by saying she was “embarrassed” and “angry” over a short clip someone at her network had shared, painting a picture, she says, of only part of the interview.
“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,” King said. “I didn’t even know anything about it. I started getting calls … I didn’t know what people were talking about.”
People even accused both her and Winfrey of purposely attacking black men.
Winfrey was visibly shaken when she revealed what King has endured these last few days.
“She is not doing well, may I say she is not…she is not doing well,” she said. “Because she has now death threats, and has to now travel with security, and she’s feeling very much attacked. Bill Cosby is tweeting from jail and she’s not doing well. And feels that she was put in a really terrible position because that interview had already ran and in the context of the interview, everyone seemed fine, including Lisa Leslie.”
This explanation comes on the heels of celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Ari Lennox, Lebron James and more calling out King on social media.
Snoop said in a video, “Don’t you hang out with Oprah? Why ya’ll attacking us, we your people. You ain’t come after f–king Harvey Weinstein asking them dumb a– questions and proceeded to call her a “funky dog-haired b–h,” which he received criticism for.
He even posted a photo of Bill Cosby and thanked him after the comedian tweeted on social media from jail, which he also got dragged for.
King was also visibly absent on the ” “CBS This Morning” today.