Monti Te'o's hoaxster, Ronaiah Tuisosopo, appeared in the first part of his interview with Dr. Phil on Thursday. The second part will be aired on Friday.
In the Thursday segment, Tuisosopo said what was previewed on "Today" on Wednesday: that he believes he is gay. During the Wednesday preview, Dr. Phil also noted that Tuisosopo told him that he "performed" the voice of Teo's fictitious girlfriend Lennay Kekua, and that he fell in love with Te'o during the faux relationship.
On Thursday, during the actual interview as opposed to the preview, Tuiasosopo's explanations and descriptions fell in line with events we already knew about. He said he felt real feelings toward Te'o and that once, when he called him and a girl picked up, he got angry. You might recall a voicemail excerpt was revealed earlier, regarding that incident.
On the night that Manti Te'o's grandmother died, Te'o supposedly told Lennay that he never wanted to speak to her again. Tuiasosopo said that was why Lennay "died" that same night.
Dr. Phil asked Ronaiah Tuiasosopo flat out: "Are you gay?" To that, Tuiasosopo replied, "If you look at this situation and everything that I've been through, I would say yeah I'm gay. But honestly I'm so confused."
He added that he feels he needs to recover from his homosexuality. Tuiasosopo is a deeply religious Christian, which could explain his reference to recovery, which sounds along the lines of ex-gay therapy.
Tuisosopo said, "It takes a lot of courage to recover from homosexuality and this type of thing and coming back to your real life. As hard of a task it is, I'm going to do all I can to live right."
Dr. Phil was taken aback by that statement. He replied, "This is for another time, but I have so much to say to you about what you just said, because a lot of it bothers me so much. But we will talk about that another time."
The episode concluded with a cliffhanger. Tuiasosopo's lawyer had told the New York Daily News that his client performed the voice, but the New York Post reported that a female cousin, Tino, handled the voice.
When pressed to do the voice, Tuiasosopo told Dr. Phil that he couldn't do the voice as he was too embarrassed. However, Dr. Phil gave Tuiasosopo a privacy screen, and as Tuiasosopo prepared to perform, it was ... cliffhanger time.
We will hear the voice tomorrow.
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