Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts is speaking for the first time about her infamous interview with Empire star Jussie Smollett.
“No-Win Situation”
The veteran news anchor described the interview, which aired on Feb 14, as a “no-win situation.” An emotional Smollett claimed he was a victim of a homophobic and racist attack. He told Roberts incident took place while out early one morning on the streets of Chicago.
But just a few days after the interview, Smollett’s story unraveled. He was later charged with felony disorderly conduct for allegedly filing a false police report.
Roberts, 58, told an audience in Brooklyn on Monday that she tried to be as neutral as possible in her questioning of Smollett,.
“I’m a black gay woman, he’s a black gay man,” reported Page Six. “He’s saying that there’s a hate crime, so if I’m too hard, then my LGBT community is going to say, ‘You don’t believe a brother,’ if I’m too light on him, it’s like, ‘Oh, because you are in the community, you’re giving him a pass.’ It was a no-win situation for me,” Roberts explained.
“I pride myself in being fair, I know how much work went into being balanced about what had happened and to challenge him on certain things,” the GMA host continued.
Red Flags
“I’ll be completely honest, I was like I don’t know if I want to do the interview or not. I said, ‘I don’t want to sit down with him if he’s going to ‘lawyer up’, and then I was told, ‘He wants to speak with you, [because] he was outraged by people making assumptions about whether it had happened or not.'”
Roberts was also told that during the interview she would be allowed to challenge Smollett on the “red flags” in his story. “They said, ‘He wants to say things that he has not said’ and I’m like, ‘As a journalist, as a newsperson, this is newsworthy, he’s going to go on record for the first time, yes I’ll do the interview,”’ she explained.
But Roberts revealed for the first time that Smollett was two-and-a-half hours late for the interview. “I sit down with him, and I don’t know what he’s going to say,” she said on Monday at the event held at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge. Two days later it emerged that two Nigerian brothers alleged they had been paid by the Smollett to stage the attack.
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“People are looking at the interview through the eyes of ‘how did you not know?”’ Roberts said. “I did the interview 48 hours before then. Had I had that information or [knew] what the brothers were alleging, heck yeah, I would have asked him about that.” She also reminded everyone that at the time Smollett was considered by police as a victim.
“It was one of the most challenging interviews I’ve ever had to do,” Roberts admitted.
