Snoop Dogg apologizes to Gayle King over Kobe Bryant interview question: 'I publicly tore you down'
Snoop Dogg apologized to Gayle King, admitting he "overreacted" with his aggressive response to her interview with Lisa Leslie. The CBS This Morning host sparked backlash after asking Leslie, a close friend of Kobe Bryant's, about his "complicated" legacy. King — who said she was "mortified" over how CBS edited the viral clip — received death threats for bringing up Bryant's sexual assault case. Snoop Dogg was among those who sent her hostile messages.
"Two wrongs don't make no right. When you're wrong, you gotta fix it," the rapper began in an Instagram post Wednesday.
Snoop then addressed King directly: "I publicly tore you down by coming at you in a derogatory manner based off of emotions... me being angry at questions that you asked."
Among the questions King asked Leslie was if Bryant's legacy was complicated for her "as a woman, as a WNBA player?" When Leslie said no, the journalist pressed further; however, King later said the "wide-ranging interview" was "totally taken out of context."
Snoop called King, 65, a "funky dog-head b****" before saying, "Respect the family and back off, b****, before we come get you." He later insisted he "didn't threaten" King, but didn’t actually apologize. Now, the 48-year-old "Lay Low" rapper said he "overreacted."
"Should have handled it differently than that. I was raised way better than that," he said. "So, I would like to apologize to you publicly for the language that I used and calling you out of your name and just being disrespectful. I didn't mean for it to be like that."
The entertainer said he was just speaking up "for a friend that wasn't here to defend himself." Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, were among the nine killed in a helicopter crash in L.A. on Jan. 26.
Snoop told his 39.4 million followers, "It's OK to man up and say that you're wrong." He concluded by telling King he hopes they can "sit down and talk privately."
In the aftermath of the interview, Oprah Winfrey said King was "not doing well."
"She has now death threats and has to now travel with security and she’s feeling very much attacked," Winfrey, who has been best friends with King for decades, said on the Today show. "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."
Winfrey explained "somebody at the network" posted the interview clip out of context, making it appear as though King was "just trying to press to get an answer" from Lisa Leslie. Winfrey, who has faced similar blowback recently over her involvement in a Russell Simmons sexual misconduct documentary, called the criticism "misogynist vitriol."
King has yet to respond to Snoop’s mea culpa.
Watch: Gayle King is 'angry' at CBS for posting 'out of context' clip about Kobe Bryant sexual assault case:
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