During her tenure, Gayle has sat down with the likes of world leaders like President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, as well as her pal Oprah Winfrey. But perhaps her most notable interview was with R. Kelly in 2019 before he was convicted of federal counts of racketeering and sex trafficking. During their chat, he became visibly upset while Gayle remained calm and simply repeated his name “Robert.”
“It escalated rather quickly,” Gayle told People in 2019. “It went from 0 to 200. When it’s happening in that moment, you don’t really feel it. I could tell he was getting a little angry, I could see that, but I didn’t expect it to go there.”
She added, “When he jumped out of the chair, and he’s hitting, and he’s screaming, and spit is flying because he’s angry, I just thought, ‘You can’t respond in kind to that.’ If you respond in kind to that, then we’re both off the rails.”
