The CBS anchor breaks her silence following the outrage over question about Kobe Bryant's sexual assault case, 'if I had only seen the clip that you saw, I'd be extremely angry with me too.'

• Feb 7, 2020

AceShowbiz - Gayle King has hit out at executives at CBS over a promo clip of an interview with the late Kobe Bryant's friend, former WNBA (Women's National Basketball Association) star Lisa Leslie, about his rape trial.

The NBA legend was killed in a helicopter crash at the age of 41 last month, along with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others.

He had previously been embroiled in a sexual assault case, which was dismissed as a criminal complaint but settled as a civil case in 2005, an episode which came up in the chat.

"It's been said that his legacy is complicated, because of a sexual assault charge that was dismissed in 2003, 2004. Is it complicated for you, as a woman, as a WNBA player?" King asked.

Leslie then replied, "It's not complicated for me at all... I just never see - have ever seen him being the kind of person that would be - do something to violate a woman or be aggressive in that way. That's just not the person that I know."

"But Lisa, you wouldn't see it though. As his friend, you wouldn't see it," King responded.

The snippet was part of a wider interview, but was the only part released online, with fans attacking King over the apparent ill-timed question.

Taking to Instagram, she responded, "I've been up reading the comments about the interview I did with Lisa Leslie about Kobe Bryant, and I know that if I had only seen the clip that you saw, I'd be extremely angry with me too."

"I am mortified. I am embarrassed and I am very angry. 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. I didn't even know anything about it."

Honouring Bryant as "warm and friendly," the broadcaster insisted there will be "a very intense discussion" between her and the network.

However, she also said she pushed the network to keep the segment in the interview, "because I thought it put a nice button on that part of the conversation."

She concluded, "I wanted you to hear exactly where I'm coming from and how I'm feeling, and to let everybody know that no disrespect intended ... I thank you for listening."