Porsha Williams details alleged sexual encounter with 'predator' R. Kelly: 'I was completely traumatized'
Porsha Williams is opening up about her past experience with disgraced singer R. Kelly.
The Real Housewives of Atlanta alum, 40, detailed for the first time, in her new memoir The Pursuit of Porsha, the dysfunctional sexual interaction with the singer, who was convicted of sex trafficking in September. Now, in an interview with Variety, she spoke about those "traumatizing" encounters — and, years later, the FBI showing up at her door to question her about Kelly.
Williams, who details childhood trauma in her book, had a pattern of bad relationships. She admitted to "looking for love in the wrong places” and ignoring "red flags," leading to men she "loved who took advantage of me.” It included surviving sexual abuse by a boyfriend in her mid-20s.
It was not long after that she — at age 25 — arrived on the doorstep of the "I Believe I Can Fly" singer's mansion outside of Chicago in 2007. Similar to the stories from Kelly accusers, she claimed one of the R&B star's procurers in Las Vegas invited her to Kelly’s recording studio there.
However, she wasn't taken to Kelly's recording studio, but ushered to his bedroom. Williams was left there for hours, she said. When Kelly, 14 years her senior, finally arrived, she said she felt like she had to have sex with him because she had put herself in that position.
“I had my own business, I had my own home,” Williams told Variety of her accomplishments at the time. “It was a mentality that has been conditioned over the years by men — that they are better than me. And I only have value if they say I have value. I think me being in that weakened mindset made me ready and available for him to be a predator, and seek me out.”
Williams added, "It’s not just that he was R. Kelly. It’s just in my life at that moment, it was just yet another man in the same position doing the exact same thing taking advantage of me.”
Williams, based in Atlanta where she owned her own day care facility, went to Kelly's Chicago mansion on more than one occasion, she admitted. In the Variety interview, she also detailed her last time there.
She said there was a "party" for him and she was one of "20 or 30 other girls” there. Some of the women had been there for weeks. Kelly apparently picked the women at the party he wanted to be with. Williams was not one of them.
That was a wake-up call of sorts, she said, as she asked herself: “What is my life?” It got worse. She said she heard screaming and what sounded like a woman being beaten, allegedly coming from one of the women Kelly did pick. She demanded to leave.
“When I got home ... I knew I had hit a wall,” she said. “I was completely traumatized, completely confused about why this was now happening to me again as a grown woman.”
Williams said Kelly contacted her many times after that, but she told him: "I’m done with you.”
Fast-forward to 2015. By then a Real Housewives star, she was also a co-host of the Dish Nation radio show and Kelly was a guest. She had to interview him — and sing with him. To get through it, she said she "went back to a common practice in my life of just putting on a mask, and playing the role."
She said during the radio interview, Kelly acted like he didn't know her. He even hit on her.
“What is so freaking crazy is that he literally tried to talk to me again,” Williams said. “I thought to myself, ‘Oh my god. I went through one of the most traumatizing experiences in my life at your home with you, and you don’t remember me? This has happened that many times that you don’t remember that I’m that same person?'"
Williams said the FBI arrived on her doorstep a few years later amid the investigation into the Kelly allegations.
“When the FBI left my house that day, I was so thankful for where God has brought me now," she said. “During talking to them, I had to be that Porsha to remember every single detail. But after they left, I just looked around my home, I saw my daughter later, and I just thanked God for just me surviving and being where I am today.”
As for how she kept her past interaction with Kelly a secret until she shared it for the first time in her book, she said she only told one friend about it at the time — so someone knew where she was for safety reasons — but didn't speak of it otherwise.
A spokesperson for Kelly had no comment to Yahoo Entertainment about Williams's claims.
Williams is currently engaged to Simon Guobadia, the estranged husband of her former RHOA co-star Falynn Guobadia. She left the Bravo series after Season 13 and landed a spin-off, Porsha’s Family Matters, debuting Nov. 28 on Bravo.
Kelly was convicted in September on nine counts of sex trafficking and racketeering. During the six-week trial, there was graphic testimony from dozens of accusers claiming sexual and physical abuse. Several accusers were minors at the time, and the charges span decades.
Kelly, who has been jailed without bail since 2019, will be sentenced May 4 and faces life in prison. Separately, he faces a trial in Chicago on child pornography, obstruction of justice and sexual abuse charges. He also faces local charges in Minnesota.
