- (Gayle) What are the lies that you're hearing
that disturb you most? - (Kelly) Oh my God.
- Oh, I saw this.
- Oh my God, I knew it.
- Okay, this is the R. Kelly stuff that's going on right now.
Ugh, it grosses me out just to even watch him
in any of these interviews.
- (Kelly) All of them. That little girl was trapped
in the basement. - Oh my God.
- (Kelly) Trying to rescue someone that doesn't
need rescuing. - Just looking at him,
it frustrates me.
- (Kelly) Because they're not in my house,
handcuffing people, starving people,
I have a harem. - They were--
what?
- (Kelly) A cult? - I can't.
There's just so much bull [bleep] coming out of his mouth.
I feel so bad for all of these women
who he put them through just hell,
but I think the documentary was definitely really important
and I think it was instrumental in him being arrested, too.
- (Gayle) Are you saying everybody in that documentary
was not telling the truth about you?
Everybody? - He evades all the questions.
- (Kelly) Everybody said something bad about me.
Nobody said nothing good. - Well, obviously.
- (Kelly) They was describing Lucifer.
I'm not Lucifer. - All you have to do
is look at yourself in a mirror and tell
yourself you're not guilty enough times
until you start believing it.
- (Kelly) You can start a rumor on a guy like me
or a celebrity just like that.
All you have to do is push a button on your phone
and say "so and so did this to me."
- It's like, I hate this so much He's realizing, "Oh [bleep].
I did all this [bleep] terrible stuff to people
and now I have to pay." And he's like, "No, you can't
judge me for that stuff back then.
I'm fine now."
- (Kelly) "R. Kelly did this to me" and if you get any traction
from that, if you're able to write a book from that,
if you're able to get a reality show,
then any girl that I had a relationship in the past
that it just didn't work out, she can come and say
the same exact thing. - Wow, man.
- (Kelly) With all I've been through in my
way, way past. - [Bleep] you.
- (Kelly) Hold somebody, let alone four, five, six,
fifty you said. How stupid would I be
to do that? - Pretty stupid.
- (Kelly) That's stupid, guys. Is this camera on me?
- (Gayle) Yes. - (Kelly) That's stupid.
- Oh my God. I thought it was
a comedy at first. I thought it was an impersonator
or something when I first saw the images on Twitter,
'cause I was like, this can't be real.
- (Kelly) Hate me if you want to, love me if you want to,
but just use your common sense. How stupid would it be...
- He's gonna lose it. He's gonna lose it.
- (Kelly) I didn't do this stuff. This is not me.
I'm fighting for my [bleep] life. Y'all killing me with this [bleep]!
I give you 30 years of my [bleep], man.
- (Gayle) Robert. - (Kelly) 30 years of my career!
- Seems like he's got himself under control real well.
That's good.
- Gayle is amazing. She's such a good interviewer.
She kept cool and collected the whole way through
and she calls him out on his bull [bleep].
- (Kelly) You're killing me, man! - There's so much anger
just welling up and I'm like, it's so--
- (Kelly) I'm trying to have a relationship with my kids
and I can't do it! - 'Cause you're sick, man.
Sick in the head.
- (Kelly) Y'all just don't wanna believe it's true.
You don't wanna believe it. - He's so defensive.
This is clearly somebody who's guilty.
- (Kelly) You don't wanna believe it!
- (Gayle) At this point, we briefly paused the interview
to give Kelly a moment. - The dude's like,
"[Bleep], we gotta move over here."
- (Kelly) I need somebody to help me not have
a big heart because my heart is so big.
- When someone says things like that,
I don't believe it.
- (Gayle) You sound like you're playing the victim here.
You sound like-- R. Kelly, you do.
- Hold on, she's talking to him like a little kid,
Goes "R. Kelly, come on. Don't cry.
R. Kelly, please."
- (Gayle) You sound like-- R. Kelly, you do.
When I listen to you-- - (Kelly) I'm just telling
the truth. I'm just telling the truth.
- Wow, man. So sad.
He's been doing this for so long and now
it's finally all catching up to him and he's--
I think he feels cornered in.
- He's not being calm and denying this
and he's not like, "Okay, you know.
I didn't do it." The way that he's
exploding and going off like this, it's just not normal.
Clearly, he's guilty.
- His ego is so big and he can't keep it in check
and he's done so many horrible, horrible things
that I feel like this is the first time he's getting
serious, serious backlash about people being like,
"No, you should go to jail." So he's just spiraling
out of control.
- It wasn't until his documentary that I watched it
and then it just felt so insane.
I know it's the whole thing where it's innocent 'til
proven guilty, but with all these people having
the same story against R. Kelly, you can't help
but believe these poor women.
- (FBE) So, that was the first interview R. Kelly has done
since he was charged with sexually abusing
four women, three of whom were underaged.
- Yeah, so I know that for a while, and this has been
going since the '90s, people have been talking
about how R. Kelly does have a thing for underaged girls
and now apparently he's been holding these girls
captive and making them his sex slaves.
- (FBE) Media outlets have gone crazy
over this interview, specifically the moment
where R. Kelly completely lost his composure
and SNL even did a parody of it recently.
- Oh yeah, I've seen that one. It's sad, but the guy
has given them so much material to work with
that the comedians are just jumping all over it.
- (Leslie) Thank you for being here, Robert.
- (Kenan) Well, thank you for having me
and please, just call me "victim." - Oh, I don't know if
I feel comfortable making fun of things like this.
- (Leslie) I guess my first question for you, Robert,
is why exactly are you doing this interview?
- (Kenan) Because people think that I'm
some kind of a monster. I'm here to remove all this doubt.
- Man, Kenan is hilarious.
- (Kenan) My lawyer was telling me no, but my ego,
my ego was telling me yes. - You know, I'm not a very
PC person, but I really feel like SNL did it in such a tasteful way
that it's the truth.
- (Kenan) Please call me "victim." - (Leslie) No.
- This is the subtext of what R. Kelly was thinking
during that actual interview.
- (Kenan) You can start a rumor about any celebrity
just like that. All you gotta do
is push a button on your phone and say, "R. Kelly did this to me."
and then attach a video of me doing that thing
and people will believe you. It's scary.
- Exactly. It's not like they were
coming out here without any proof.
- (Leslie) I'm just gonna ask you plainly,
have you ever held women against their will?
- (Kenan) Why would I do that? That would be stupid.
How stupid would it be for me, R. Kelly,
with all the crazy, illegal things that I've done in my past
on tape. - It's a [bleep] up situation,
but I feel like a lot of ways people process really
traumatic and hard things is to laugh through them
and to make fun of them and to twist them
in a funny way.
- (Kenan) And gotten away with scott free.
To do it again, - It's funny, but it's also sad
because this is just so true.
- (Kenan) Why would I do these things?
For 30 years! - (groaning)
Something like this is never funny in any context
whatsoever, so it's like, I just thought it was
in bad taste.
- (Kenan) I gave y'all Trapped in the Closet,
Feeling on Your Booty, Age Ain't Nothing But a Number
and so many other clues! - Ooh.
- Oh my God. This is not okay
to laugh about. This is serious stuff
that people go through every day.
- (Kenan) This is how you repay me?
I don't have anybody left in my corner.
30 years! - (Leslie) Robert, okay.
- (Kenan) Oh man, that's almost a decade.
- Wow, that was a good one. Kenan is really funny.
- To me, this is okay because they're not really
making fun of the victims and they're not really
bringing the victims into this.
It's just about R. Kelly himself and already he made
a fool out of himself and that's what has allowed
for people to make fun of him in this situation.
I just think he's a disgusting human being
who deserves everything that's coming to him.
- It's a rough subject because when you joke about
something like that, it is bad, right?
I feel bad for the victims, I feel bad for what happened.
I think where everybody's making fun of it is him.
Right, they're pointing their jokes at him.
- I feel that the people that are pro R. Kelly,
they are not gonna want to listen to the criticism of him,
but maybe through comedy and something like that,
they're gonna see it and maybe, maybe they
change their mind. However, I don't feel
comfortable laughing about topics that serious.
You have people say I'm too serious,
but I don't freaking care.
- (FBE) So as you saw, it looks like people are
pretty openly making fun of R. Kelly and the interview.
Why do you think our society seems to respond in
comedic ways with things like memes or the SNL parody
to something that is so serious?
- I think in general, comedy stems from something dark
and something serious. Now that it's so easy
to make memes and to make videos
and edit things together, it's just a really easy way
for us to deflect on the situation.
- It's a way for us as an internet society
to cope with really tough information.
We like to make fun of dark situations
to kind of deal with-- it's a really serious matter.
- I think it's funny to poke fun and--
not that it's reducing the severity and the seriousness
of the situation. When they make skits about it
and stuff like that, it's kind of a jab
to them, you know? "Hey, you screwed up."
- It'd be interesting to know for people who watch this now,
do they actually dig into it and figure out what--
'cause now, I'm actually-- I'm like, "I wonder what
the full story is" so now I'm probably gonna
go home and I'm probably gonna actually read
exactly what happened.
- People don't like to be exposed to something
that makes them uncomfortable, that makes them feel,
maybe this is something kinda serious.
This man slept with underaged women
and you guys are taking this as a joke.
This is funny. Ha ha ha, we can laugh at this.
Where's that funny anywhere?
- (FBE) So recently, there's been the documentary
about the R. Kelly allegations and a different documentary
about Michael Jackson's alleged abuse of children
called Leaving Neverland. - I heard about it,
but I hadn't watched it yet, 'cause I don't have HBO.
- (FBE) These types of allegations both against celebrities
and in general society with people around children
seem to be surfacing more and more frequently,
so often times, even with regular people
and very often with celebrities or big organizations
that have this come to light, people find it hard to believe.
Why do you think people sometimes have a hard time
believing these things? - Because it's so [bleep]
diabolical is what it is. You can't fathom it
as a human being is why a lot of people
are like, "No, that would never happen to my kid."
- It's hard for people to believe it
when they thankfully have grown up
in an environment that they were never
in that situation.
- When it's actually happening to you
and you don't report it to adults,
who's gonna believe you years from now
and I think that's kinda the conflict that
a lot of victims face.
- The celebrity makes such an impact on their life
and for them, that celebrity can do no wrong,
which is not true. They can do a lot of wrong.
- It's a lot harder for people to believe
that celebrities are doing this because they respect
and love these people so much.
I mean, I know even for me, to be honest,
even with the whole Michael Jackson thing,
for a while I was like, "I don't know."
'Cause I realized that it's because I love
Michael Jackson, but if he did these things,
then obviously that's awful regardless of who he is
and the survivors need to be believed.
- (FBE) So, one of the big topics of discussion
surrounding both Michael Jackson and R. Kelly
has been their music. People are debating
whether it's okay to still listen to it
and some are calling for radio stations and platforms
like Spotify to remove their music all together.
- God, I always think about this, too,
because it is a bit of a moral dilemma.
When it's something serious, like sexual abuse
or sexual assault, that's where I start thinking,
"Okay, so I don't think I can listen to this anymore."
- I as the viewer, should be able to select what I wanna watch.
I shouldn't have somebody out there that's filtering it for me.
- Yeah, it sucks, 'cause it's like,
some of this music was fantastic.
You'll hear it sometimes still somewhere
where people are like, "Oh, I still stand with R. Kelly."
But I can't support that because I know what he did
and for me to continue playing that would be like,
he did this to poor women, but I'm okay with it,
'cause his music's great. We can't do that.
We just can't.
- A lot of artists in the past have had really troubled
upbringings and stuff like that and a lot of tragedy
and things like that that fuel their artwork,
but when you're doing something this heinous
and this [bleep] unforgivable, I don't want that type of art.
- (FBE) So finally, would you continue listening
to R. Kelly's or anyone's music that you enjoy even if
they are facing crimes like this? - I can't.
There's just some things that you just can't do.
I'm so cautious to listen to any artist now,
'cause now it's like, okay, do I have to go
dig up some research and find out that they
did something too and now I have to cancel
these people?
- Like this? No, I wouldn't.
The same thing happened with Kevin Spacey.
He used to be my favorite actor and then when
that stuff happened, I can't look at him the same way.
- For my own personal use, I can cut out the music.
- It's a bummer. I still hear a Michael Jackson song
on the radio, I don't immediately think of all of this.
It happens to be on, I'm not gonna run over
and turn the radio off.
- Even now, when I hear Michael Jackson's songs,
it's like, oh, I love this song, but there's always
a little memory that pops up where I'm like,
he did some not so great things and then I don't know what to do.
I get conflicted and it's like,
well, I still listen to the music.
- Michael Jackson's music is timeless.
It's not going anywhere, so the music, the art
is bigger than the person, so it's like,
I can separate the two. I can't just say
just because they've been accused of this,
I'm not gonna listen to that.
- I don't plan on listening to him or supporting
anyone else that has been found to be an abuser.
This actually happened recently where I was at a club
and they started playing Ignition. I and a lot of other people
in the club kinda just stopped dancing and we all
kinda just looked at each other like, all right.
At the same time, I'm not gonna go
and be like, "Turn this off right now."
- I know a lot of people deleted everything
and burned their CDs and all of that.
I wasn't so fast to jump into any conclusions.
I didn't delete the album, but I have it
and when I shuffle and the song comes up,
I do change it. It's just a hard thing.
I don't wanna delete it, but I'm not listening to it.